


electric feel (take me to the place where the white boys dance)

by nantes (titians)



Category: Actor RPF, Fashion Model RPF, One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Glam Rock, F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 10:37:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titians/pseuds/nantes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale of such selfish creatures impossibly (and abjectly) tangled together, too engrossed in their cult of personality and the search for untainted devotion. (Not one of them knows how to share.) A <em>Velvet Goldmine</em> AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	electric feel (take me to the place where the white boys dance)

> “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”  
>  **HEMINGWAY on F. SCOTT FITZGERALD**
> 
> “No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when a pool of their blood edges up too close.”  
>  **PALAHNIUK**   
> 

 

 

_0 0 1 ._  
_I N T R O_

_( 1 9 8 4 )_

"Zayn."

Zayn looks up from the pages of copy in front of him, the lid of his pen between his lips. It's red while the pen he's using is actually green. Slowly, not removing his eyes from his editor, he removes it from his lips and asks, "Yes?"

"How's that piece for the entertainment section coming along?"

He falters, but only for a second. "It's. Not."

His editor nods. It's only Tuesday; the piece isn't needed til last thing on Friday. "To be honest," he leads, "I don't think any of our readers really care enough about _The Karate Kid_ that much." Again, all his editor does is nod. "It feels like a bit of a pointless article."

"I'll- Leave it with me," the other man replies. No nod this time. "I'll come back to you."

He exits with a soft click of the door and Zayn lets his attention return to the pages on his desk. He put down the lid of the pen but when he reaches out his hand, it isn't where he left it. It makes Zayn frown. In the background, a clock ticks. He sighs.

He gets up and goes for lunch, even though it's only just gone 11:30.

On his way passed the photocopier, he spots Liam. Their eyes meet and Liam gives him a small smile. Zayn waves at him in return before shoving his hands in his pockets and shouldering his way out the door. It's unusually warm outside for so late into September but Zayn keeps his hands in his pockets, his jacket collar high around his neck as he walks to the café. A sandwich and two cigarettes later, he comes back to the office with a coffee for Liam. Just because.

"Ah, top, mate," he says in thanks.

There's a canteen in the office block but the coffee isn't as good.

Zayn lights up a third cigarette, settling his ass against the lip of Liam's desk while Liam adds about seven sugars to his cup. "How's the piece for Saturday coming?" he asks. Zayn makes a noise, disapproving and brief. "That good?"

"I told the boss the same. He says he's gonna find me something else."

Liam laughs, light and straight into his coffee before he takes a sip. Zayn cocks an eyebrow, exhaling smoke through his nose.

He's barely finished his cigarette when he gets called into the editor's office. It's a small, boxy room with too many filing cabinets and only one chair. With a careful finger, a piece of paper gets slid across the top of the desk at Zayn. He is instructed, "Read it."

His editor's handwriting is barely legible at the best of times and this looks like it was written in haste.

But Zayn works it out.

> _Harry Styles_  
>  _Gemma Arterton_  
>  _Nick Grimshaw_  
> 

He was never expecting this. Maybe something about _Ghostbusters_ or perhaps something on the newest Douglas Adams' novel. But this? Zayn reads over the names again, just to be sure. He doesn't have any idea what to say.

"You remember them, don't you?"

Of course he does. He was- fuck, Zayn was 18 when _The Last Rites of Agnes Moorehead_ was released, younger again when _Mandragora_ and _Flaming Creatures_ came out. Those albums were Zayn's everything as a teenager. He reads over the three names again. "Yeah. They were-"

" _The_ faces of British glam rock," his editor finishes for him. "For five years, they practically controlled the trends in music, fashion, even sexuality in this country. Teenagers worshipped them." He pauses. "And then, they disappeared. What happened?"

Zayn doesn't mean to sound factitious, he absolutely doesn't. He's just stating the obvious. "Well, one of them died in a motorcycle accident." It sounds mean and cold no matter what way he intones it.

"Ten years ago − the anniversary is next week."

Zayn can feel his inner teenager tutting at his older self, shaking his head angrily because how could Zayn have missed something like that. He coughs, ignoring the small voice in his head that says 'we should've known that'. "What exactly do you want?" he asks, folding the paper and meeting the editor's eyes.

He clucks his tongue off his back teeth ahead of speaking. Clucks his tongue and Zayn can practically hear the bubbles of spit pop under the weight of the muscle. He begins, "I want to know where Gemma and Harry are now. Ten years on, what have they done? Who have they become? Are they still as beautiful? Just. Where are they?" Zayn feels himself nodding. "Anything you can get me, on my desk by Friday afternoon so it can go out on Saturday, in time for the anniversary."

He asks Zayn, "Can you do that for me?"

"Sure."

 

;;

 

The first search brings up nothing. 

The online database has no record of either names. There have been no articles written about Gemma since 1977, not since the divorce. And Harry's name stops appearing a couple of years later, nothing after 1979. Even asking around the others in the office, Perrie, Aiden, Danny, no one has heard about the two of them in years.

With a soft, sad sigh Perrie says, "Maybe you're looking at the wrong end?"

Zayn trumpets out a displeased noise through his nose.

She raises her eyebrow at him in return. "Just. Maybe you should start at the beginning."

In the door, almost fully gone from the room as Zayn starts typing out a name into the computer, Perrie turns back and offers, "I doubt you'll find them together."

Zayn waves her off, mutters something about trying to work. He isn't hoping to find them together − he just wants to find them at all.

 

 

 

 

_0 0 2 ._  
_B E N_

Ben ushers him into a chair and immediately goes off to make tea. He looks older than the last photo of him Zayn has seen but, somehow, looks less tired. More relaxed in himself. While Ben busies himself in the kitchen, filling the kettle, taking down one of the good plates to serve cakes on, Zayn removes a stuffed giraffe from next to his hip, tossing it on the ground.

"Milk, sugar?" he hears Ben's voice call from the kitchen.

He answers, "Milk, thanks. No sugar."

There are voices further down the garden. Children, little girls playing and Zayn turns his head to the French windows to try and see them. He wonders if they look like Ben. (He wonders if Ben would have done any of this if he'd stayed with Harry.) He says, "Thanks," turning around just in time to see Ben enter the room with a tray.

"Milk's in the jug − I didn't know how much you'd like," he explains, handing Zayn a cup. There are poppies painted on it. Zayn nods and breathes out a quiet 'thanks' and lets Ben take the first biscuit. "So." He sounds it out, almost cautious about it. "You're here about Harry Styles."

He nods, picking up something round with a lot of chocolate on top.

"Just a few questions."

"Where would you like me to start?"

Zayn considers the offer for a moment. Everyone thinks they know the story of Harry's start in music already but- there's something in the way Ben says it that makes Zayn think. Perhaps- "Wherever you'd like."

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 6 8 )_

When Harry meets Ben, he's barely 17 years old but he has broken half the hearts in Camden already. Ben spies him a mile off, this cherubic creature with perfect dark curls and large eyes across the bar. He is everything a London mod wishes they were while still managing to retain little flickers of his hometown, of the boy he was before.

Ben smiles, shaking his head as he orders another gin and tonic, and waits.

A nudge to the side from James is accompanied by the question, "Who is he?"

Taking his change, Ben shakes his head. "I have no idea."

"Harry," the girl behind the bar answers for them. "That's Harry Styles."

The woman he's with, petite and sporting a ridiculous hat − ridiculous for both inside a nightclub and outside, but then again Caroline always seems like she's wearing a hat, even when she isn't − is Caroline. Everyone knows Caroline. She's got a husky laugh and a permanently painted mouth that all the boys seem to like and she can generally be found hanging around the latest up-and-comer who is so enamoured that she's even talking to him, the first six songs he writes after meeting her are always about her. Some people might call her a groupie, but Ben feels the people she's fucking actually need to be famous for her to deserve that title. No. In Ben's opinion, she has an extraordinary eye for talent.

He makes it over to her, as Harry takes the stage, and she shifts over in the booth to let him sit down.

"Where did you find this one then?" he asks.

She hums out a laugh around the straw of her drink. "Cheshire, little place called Holmes Chapel. He used to work in a bakery."

Ben easily pictures him, this Harry Styles, serving him a cream cake and handing over the change afterwards in a small, family run bakery in some little, Tudor town with a church in the middle with a working bell and a town square that holds a Christmas market every December. (The fact that Ben has never been to anywhere in Cheshire in his life is beside the point.)

"How twee," Ben replies and Caroline finally looks at him.

"He wrote me a song."

Ben rolls his eyes, sighing. He fishes a cigarette out of the packet in his jacket pocket. Caroline doesn't ask for one and he doesn't bother offering. "How old is he, then?"

"Seventeen."

Lighting up, he inhales smoke and lets it filter back out of his nose. On stage, Harry's song moves from the verse to the bridge again. Ben wonders if it's the one he wrote for Caroline − it isn't the happiest or lightest of songs but that doesn't mean it isn't. "He's not shit," Ben tells her, like she doesn't already know.

Caroline makes a noise of triumph.

He continues, "I could easily sell him."

 

;;

 

Harry drops to his knees before Ben even has the cubicle door closed behind him. He laughs out a quick, "Steady on," but Harry isn't listening. Too preoccupied with getting Ben's belt open. They left Caroline sitting at the table, said they were going to the bar to get another round but then Harry's hand was tight around Ben's wrist, tugging him until he stumbled and followed him and. Here they are.

This isn't how Ben usually does things.

He usually signs people because they're talented. Because he can help them make a record, a good one. He doesn't do it to get blowjobs from pretty 17 year olds in bathroom stalls.

But if this is how Harry wants to say 'thanks' then who is Ben to stop him? Braver, better men than himself would be powerless to say no to Harry Styles' mouth.

He gets his lips around the head of Ben's cock, not fully hard yet but definitely, absolutely getting there, and Ben hisses like he's been scalded. Harry looks up at him through his eyelashes. All big green eyes and his pink mouth stretched around Ben's dick. "Go on then," he sighs, hoping to sound disinterested but knowing it comes out a smidge too breathless for that.

Harry purrs − actually purrs, like a fucking contented cat − around him. And Ben's fingers tangle in his hair.

 

;;

 

Berlin is too hot in August.

Lou, the makeup artist, dabs Harry's neck with a towel, carefully keeping the wet out of his hair, before powdering along his nose. Ben runs his hand through his own hair and sweat clings to his fingers − he should take off his jacket to counter the heat but it ties his outfit together too well. Without it, the pants don't match the shirt.

The song is about Caroline − Ben has that much worked out. Harry is 17 and while he may be talented, he isn't a master wordsmith like Lewis Carroll − but the girl in the video, the girl chosen by Harry himself, looks nothing like her.

She has dark hair and wears a flower crown and Harry plays at being the lovesick dope beautifully.

Ben sits behind on a chair behind the camera. He practically falls off when Harry pulls the girl to him and kisses her, righting himself before anyone can notice, everyone too busy staring at the unscripted kiss taking place in front of them.

Back at the hotel, over a steak dinner and a bottle of Merlot between them, Ben asks Caroline, "Do you mind?"

"Mind what?"

Ben frowns. He knows she isn't that dumb. She was there when it happened. But, for her benefit, since she wants them to do it this way, Ben sounds out, "That Harry kissed someone else?"

Caroline makes a noise from her throat, quick and loud, and waves her hand through the air, like she is brushing his words away from him. The scarf she's wearing belongs to Harry; she fiddles with the hem of it as she answers, "Of course not. He's a kid, he'll do what he likes. I won't stop him." She sounds pragmatic but Ben feels how much she has to mean the words, needs them to be true.

He hums, thoughtfully, as he nods.

"Anyway," she continues, dropping the edge of the scarf and wrapping her fingers around the stem of her wine glass, "I don't know that girl. Why would it bother me when she's no one?"

Ben eyes her. She's beautiful, tanned and lovely, the heavy gold necklace she's wearing catching the light and throwing mismatched shapes on the long column of her throat. But she's- Harry's- God. They're both in their thirties and Harry is still a child. Ben gulps at the thought, staring at the table as realisation washes over him. 'She's no one' repeats in his head. And Caroline's right − she _is_ no one. For now. But now she has kissed Harry Styles, who was no one until Ben and Caroline made him someone. Young, lovely Harry who kisses girls in his music video because they're pretty and sucks Ben off in club toilets as thanks for helping with his career; young Harry who has his whole life ahead of him while Ben is getting old. Realising he's getting old.

When he comes back to reality, Caroline is staring at him.

"Alright?" she asks, red wine stain around her mouth and her glass empty on the table.

Ben blinks too many times and answers, "Yeah. Fine."

He leans in and kisses her on the cheek, catching her gasp of surprise when he pulls back. She looks at him and Ben looks at her. "You're not no one," he says, because it's there to say and he has nothing better to do.

Caroline takes it with a laugh.

"You too," she counters.

It's very clearly a joke, but Ben takes the statement at face value. He gives her a smile, nodding when she asks if he wants another drink, already up from the table and going to the bar regardless of his answer. Ben watches Caroline walk away, taking in the gait of her stride and the angles her hips make under her skirt. She's beautiful, a proper woman.

And utterly wasted on a child like Harry Styles.

Back in London, at the party for Harry's album launch, Ben kisses Caroline.

With a disco ball suspended on a chain from the ceiling and the lights changing from blue to green to white and back again all around them, Ben pulls Caroline in with a strong arm around her waist and kisses her on the mouth. She pushes herself up on her tiptoes, taking back some control from him as she traces the seam of his lips with the tip of her tongue.

He can feel her lipstick smearing across his mouth.

Last time he checked, Harry was flirting with some cute redhead, a secretary of one of the bosses.

Neither of these matter when Caroline loops her arm around his shoulders. Ben breathes out accidentally into her mouth, not the sexiest thing he's ever done but she laughs against his lips and keeps kissing him in return. His fingers tangle in her hair as he reaches up her body, finally settling his hand on her neck, holding her to him.

It's all lip and teeth and tongue, the faintest hint of nicotine in her mouth and maybe, just maybe, a tang of metal from a filling in her back molar.

They pull apart, slower than polite, when a familiar voice laughs behind them. Caroline leans her head on Ben's shoulder as Harry smiles at them both. He looks at his face for any signs of hurt or upset but Harry smiles the way Harry always smiles at Ben, open and honest, like that smile is only for Ben. "Having a good night?" he laughs.

Caroline shoves at him, pulling away from Ben but not going too far.

"Shut up," she orders, but the smile on her face meets her eyes and betrays the sternness of her tone.

Ben chuckles.

 

;;

 

It isn't Ben's idea and he doesn't think it's Harry's. That makes it Caroline's, an obvious answer since she was the one to order Harry, "Kiss him," while gesturing at Ben. But that may have been all Caroline wanted, for Ben to kiss Harry in front of her. Nothing else. Not the three of them stumbling into someone's bedroom − Ben thinks it's his, but can't see the shoes he left scattered around the place anywhere − and Harry making short work of getting Caroline's tights off.

He slips his hands up the silky, smooth line of Caroline's legs and squeezes hard enough his fingers leave white marks in their wake when he lets up. Her breath hitches. Even looking at him from behind, Ben can feel the smirk on Harry's lips.

"Can I?" he asks.

Caroline nods and Harry dips his head. His smirk spreads into a softer grin as she shifts under him, opening her legs further and raising her hips so he can remove her underwear.

Ben just stands there, watching as Harry asks, "You sure?"

This time, he doesn't wait for Caroline's nod. He drops his head down, kissing the inside of her bare thigh, and breathes over her. Her own breathing is uneven, staccato little intakes of air that get exhaled out in one long moan when he finally − finally finally _finally_ , Ben has been waiting for it as well − leans in properly and licks into her cunt.

Harry moans back at her enthusiasm, mouth wrapped around her clit and eyes closed. Caroline shivers.

He licks her open carefully, settling himself down onto his stomach to get at her better while Caroline lifts herself onto her elbows to watch him. Her chest rises and falls with every breath she takes. Ben doesn't think he's ever seen a more gorgeous sight.

With a shake in her hand, Caroline extends out her arm and beckons him over.

His lips find hers, a whine against his mouth and he pushes his tongue into her mouth before he's properly on the bed next to them. Below them, Harry looks up from beneath his eyelashes to watch them, mouth open obscenely as he catches Ben's eye, his lips and chin glistening with how wet Caroline is. Ben reaches down, an almost fond gesture, and pushes Harry's hair back from his face to give himself a better view. Caroline's fingers scrabble from Ben's shirt, nails scrapping.

Harry reaches for him as well.

"Get your cock out," he says, just missing aloof.

Ben does as he's told. Harry licks his lips, making a show of it, aware he's being watched. His mouth hovers over Caroline, who bites into the line of Ben's throat, traces his pulse with her tongue and waits for Harry to get back to her. He reaches for Ben's dick once it's out − pre-come bubbling at the head where it's shiny and dark. Ben's stomach heaves, the muscles rolling when Harry strokes down him, the noise deliciously wet.

Liking his reaction, Harry does it again. 

His smirk comes back.

Ben thinks it may have been Harry's idea all along, but then he stops thinking, Caroline's hand wrapping around his dick, taking over from Harry, and Harry's tongue returning to Caroline's clit.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 8 4 )_

"We shared him after that," Ben says, cup of tea finished and reaching for the pot to pour another one. "Made the most sense to − if there was both of us there, he wasn't going to find someone else, was he?" He laughs, the noise hollow. "Of course, everything seemed like a good idea then. It was the 60s."

Zayn nods, like he agrees.

Ben sighs, staring off into the garden. Zayn wonders what he sees in front of his eyes but doesn't ask. He isn't here for Ben − sadly, because Ben seems good; smart and interesting and piece about Ben would be great. . . But no one ever cares about the jilted manager, do they? − and they're only in 1968 so far, another year or so of his time with Harry to go.

"We thought we were doing the right thing."

Again, Zayn nods.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 6 8 )_

 

It's only meant to be a Summer job, a small favour from one of his mum's friends. 

It's meant to be just a few months sitting behind a desk at a production studio, answering telephones and not talking to the talent. Something he can write down as experience and, if he's good enough, can attach as a reference when he goes onto his next job. He isn't meant to stay. But Louis Tomlinson is Louis fucking Tomlinson and a job that is meant to end in September keeps going. And going. And going.

It's because he's good with people. Louis reads people the way others read the blurb on the back cover of the latest hardback − he knows everything important about them after one glance, switches on his 1000 watt smile and they're his. 

It's a beautiful talent to have, if he says so himself.

He enters the club with a wave of the bouncer's arm. He feels himself smile more when the gaggle of girls behind him get stopped, asked for ID and to pay to get in; one of them argues, "But he didn't have to," gesturing towards Louis as he takes his coat off, handing it to Jade at the cloakroom. He doesn't bother sticking around to hear how the rest plays out, pocketing the ticket stub she hands him and walking towards the bar.

Eyes watch him strut passed. They always do.

Louis has glitter in his hair and violet eyeliner under his eyes. (His last girlfriend, Eleanor, told him it suited him. Louis can't remember why they ever broke up.) Out on the street it earns him a couple of glares, a few nasty comments, but in here − in here, Louis could buy and sell half the crowd. One mention of who he works for and they're putty in his hands. (But he doesn't have to, generally, already got them weak at the knees with a smile and the angle of his neck.)

He orders a drink from Max behind the bar, tapping his foot impatiently as the coins in his hand go warm with the wait, before turning around and surveying the rest of the place.

There's a larger crowd than usual tonight. A girl in white lace accidentally elbows him as she tries to attract Max's attention. Louis shoots her a frown, then steps away. She's fairly drunk already, sloppy with it and talking louder than she needs to above the low hum of the music. With a sigh, Louis heads for a table and waits for someone to come to him.

Niall does.

Out of everyone he knows, Louis would consider Niall his friend. (But that's not something he would ever say aloud. Being friends with an Irishman isn't something someone admits to in London.) He greets him with, "Good night, mate?" and shuffles over on his seat to let him sit down.

Niall is all smiles and blonde hair. He flicks at Louis' quiff, some glitter tumbling down and landing across Louis' nose but Louis laughs as he swats him away. "You look like some sort of fairy," Niall tells him. Louis doesn't think he looks any different from the way he usually does, but he lets him have it, taking another sip from his drink. He says, "You should be over there with the old queens. They've been preening since Styles got here."

"Styles?" Louis parrots.

Niall looks at him like he's gone mad. "You know," he sighs, his wrist pivoting, making his hand twirl a full circle, like it emphasises his point more. "The kid from Cheshire − that song everyone's going nuts over."

Louis does a quick flip through the rolodex of names in his head. "Styles?" he repeats. "He's not signed with us."

His laugh is loud, bright, and Louis feels his face move into a smile to mirror Niall's. "He wishes," he sounds out, a little catty but Louis loves it. "Harry Styles," he says, like he's just remembered. "He could probably use better management, to be honest; he's signed to some small label but he's good. Deserves better."

"Is he playing here tonight?"

Again, there's a despairing look thrown his direction from Niall. Louis thinks he might be a bad influence − when they met six months ago, Niall was the sweetest, sunniest person Louis had ever encountered (and he includes his twin baby sisters in that mix) but now he's throwing around looks like the Queen of Sheba herself. Louis pets him on the face as he informs him, "Unless they're signed with me, I don't care."

"Yeah," Niall answers. "He's playing here tonight." He points vaguely to the left, down the stairs a bit, and tells Louis, "His entourage are down there. The usual crowd. Caroline, James, couple of the others."

Ah.

Yes, Louis knows that lot well. None of them really seem to like him that much.

"Well," he says, sounding like he's still considering it, "maybe we should go and introduce ourselves to Mr Harry Styles, if he's in the market for better management and new friends."

Niall opens his mouth and laughs, revealing teeth.

 

;;

 

Louis combs his fingers through Harry's hair as he orders their drinks. With a smile, he turns back to Louis and asks, "Do you jive?" Louis gets lost in the gravelly tone of his voice, thick and deep from singing the set he's just finished.

"Sorry?"

"Do you jive?" he repeats.

Harry looks so earnest. On his cheek a red lipstick stain the shape of Caroline's mouth sits on the bone. Louis smiles. He's adorable. Louis could just eat him.

"Sometimes," he answers smoothly, leaning his elbows on the bar and angling his hips. Harry licks his bottom lip, obviously interested. "Depends on how much I like a person." Harry hums, nodding thoughtfully. He's no fool, this Harry Styles − like Louis, he knows his strengths and uses them to his advantage. "I barely know you," he says.

Harry looks momentarily wounded, but quickly recovers. There's an empty table in the corner, Louis spotted it on the way to the bar with him, but Harry sees it now. With a hand on the curve of Louis' spine, just on the belt of his pants, Harry ushers him towards it. He climbs onto the seat and Harry follows, choosing to sit pressed in close rather than on his own chair, opposite. Louis takes a second to breathe as he looks at Harry's mouth, wondering who is the prey here anymore.

"Now," Harry says, "you can get to know me."

Louis laughs, despite himself. "Oh, really?"

Harry nods, authoritative.

"Alright," and it sounds like he's agreeing. "What is there to know about you?"

Harry shrugs. They're off to a great start, Louis thinks, but keeps it quiet. "I grew up in Cheshire and I play guitar," he says, and Louis laughs because 'I knew that'. "Fine," Harry sighs. Louis can't keep track of what's happening − it was Harry's idea they come here to talk and now he has him here, he's got nothing to say. (Maybe Harry _isn't_ as smart as Louis initially gave him credit for. Or smarter. He can't tell.) "I like the glitter in your hair."

"That's not really what I was looking for."

"Well," and he shrugs again, broad shoulders moving his shirt with it. "It's something about me, isn't it?" He clicks his tongue off his back teeth, his tongue glistening wet where Louis can it in his mouth. "What about you?" he asks, a little coy. Louis shakes his head, looking down and smiling. God. _Harry Styles_ ; he wasn't expecting this when Niall mentioned a boy from Cheshire. "What do you do?"

"I work for a record company," he replies.

He taps the edge of the table with his fingers, quietly while Harry nods.

When he smiles, he exposes teeth the way Niall did earlier. And Louis realises he was being played all along.

 

;;

 

His fingers leave glitter in Harry's curls as he fucks him, Harry pushing back onto Louis' dick. He's so responsive, and Louis just has to yank his head back further to hear the gasped out whine he makes. " _Fuck_ ," he curses out as Louis lets his hair go. He fucks into him as deep as he can, stroking his glitter stained fingers down the arch of Harry's spine. Harry's knuckles are white, gripping the sheets beneath him so tightly. "Fuck," he repeats.

Louis leans over him. He kisses along his shoulders, salt from his sweat staining his lips, and Harry gets a hand in his hair, holding him in place. It sets everything off balance but Louis makes it work, easing his arm underneath Harry's stomach.

The tip of his cock spreads wet along his arm as Louis lifts him, essentially fucking Harry back onto him. But Harry is pliant, moaning out Louis' name, over and over.

The noise he makes when Louis wraps his fingers around his dick is the most wonderful sound Louis has ever heard. He toys with making a comment about recording it, selling it and seeing how many millions of records they can unload, but Harry's elbow is starting to shake, the muscles in his stomach quivering with his approaching orgasm and Louis takes pity on him, getting a proper rhythm going.

Harry tugs Louis' hair hard enough it stings, bringing tears to the corner of his eyes when he comes.

A rough, dry sob leaves his mouth and he sags, only as far as Louis' arm lets him. Soft, whimpered out noises leave his mouth as Louis keeps fucking him, his own thighs trembling with the need to come.

Afterwards, after Louis has come and they've had an argument over who should get the wet patch − "You made it." "You made me make it." − Louis lies next to Harry and breathes out. Their breathing has just about returned to normal and Harry is warm, a solid line of muscle and skin beside him, the duvet kicked down to the end of the bed.

"That was great," Harry tells him, suddenly very much 17. Too 17 for Louis to handle. 

Something inside him flutters as he lifts his hand to brush Harry's sweaty curls away from his face. He hums, letting his eyes close, and turns his head to kiss at Louis' wrist. Louis gives him back, "You're kinda great," meaning more than he thought he would.

Harry smiles.

They sleep until dawn, when the air drops in temperature and Louis is woken by the sound of Harry shuffling down the bed to get the duvet.

"Sorry," he apologises, coming back up with the blankets around his shoulders. He tosses them, and a leg, over Louis, crowding into his space in a cuddle but Louis goes with it, wrapping his arm around Harry's waist and holding him in.

They wake up another couple of hours later, the duvet cocooned around them both and Harry's hair tickling at Louis' chin. His attempts to swat it away are ultimately useless, the curls bouncing back less than a second later every time and against his chest, Harry tells Louis, "Hey," his voice slow and lazy, newly awake and warm. Louis kisses the top of his head in apology and offers to make breakfast.

After that, two cups of tea and a shirt from Louis' wardrobe, it's fairly easy to steal Harry from Ben.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 6 9 )_

Caroline finds out first.

She says, "Whose mouth?" and prods at one of the lovebites on Harry's chest. He winces, hissing. The mark is still mostly red-purple, not yet faded to yellow. She prods him again, her face becoming more serious.

Hands settled on her hips, Harry says, "Louis."

"Tomlinson?" she fires back, a little astonished and a bit more upset. "He-" She doesn't bother finishing, instead hitching her knee up to get off of Harry's lap. He puts up less of a fight than he should. "How long?" she asks.

Off the top of his head, Harry's not sure. His best guess is, "A few months."

This time, Caroline's hand slaps into the bruise, stinging it so hard Harry lifts his hand to defend himself. He gets her wrist between his fingers and orders her, "Stop. It hurts." But he's too slow to catch her other arm and gets another slap.

"It's meant to."

Harry opens his mouth to say something. A sentence about Ben flickers in the forefront of his mind, about how they've been fucking him − alone and separately − but it feels like a dumb argument. Because Caroline knew about Ben; Caroline gave him _permission_ to fuck Ben.

Harry gives up, lets go of her wrist and waits for another slap.

It doesn't come. By the next morning, Caroline is gone and Ben knows everything. Unlike Caroline, who seemed upset Harry would fuck someone else, Ben starts yelling about who Louis is. Harry flinches back from him at one point and Ben almost pulls him in for a hug. Momentarily, he had forgotten how young he was. He had been yelling at him the way he would yell at anyone else he worked with for doing something as colossally stupid as telling their biggest competitor everything. But here in front of him, Harry is a teenager again, and Ben has been yelling at him in a way he imagines his old headmaster used to.

Fuck.

Ben immediately moves to apologise but Harry pulls back. 

It's then, really, that Ben loses him. Even after months of Harry fucking Louis, little by little giving himself over and letting himself need not only Louis, but everything he could offer, Ben only loses him when he calls him an idiot. When he treats him like a child (like the child he is). But officially, it's more dramatic than a hissy argument in the middle of a hotel bar. And when it comes, it hurts more than Ben thought it would. 

Even Harry looks a little shocked by it, but does nothing. Louis claps at the video, Harry's face slowly fading to black as the rest of the board remain quiet. Ben thinks he might be sick, looking around for a bin in case he needs it. Harry stumbles forward, uneasy on his legs but smiling, as Louis stops his applause.

The room is silent.

Placing his hands on the table, Louis says, "Nice stuff, wouldn't you say?" It's for the other ten men in suits, their grey ties neatly pressed by their wives the night before, but his eyes never leave Ben's face, an unashamed taunt. "I'm interested."

Harry flushes pink along his nose.

Yes. There's that nauseous feeling again. He still hasn't found a bin yet. Ben swallows down something in his throat, hoping to quell it until he's outside. He knows where this is going. And he's powerless to stop it. Fuck. He can't handle this. Sweat prickles along the back of his neck, sticking his collar to his skin. His mouth is going dry as Louis keeps talking, explaining to his bosses about Harry's potential.

"And you'd manage him?" one of the men states, less of a question than Ben would like but something akin to appreciation rolls in his chest at the words.

Harry comes out with, "But I've already got management."

It's all for show.

"Not in my opinion," the same man states. Ben feels ready to burst into tears. Mid-thirties, sitting in front of a crowd of men his father's age as the teenage rockstar he's moulded from a club singer to Harry fucking Styles gets handed over to Louis Tomlinson, Ben is going to weep. And vomit. Christ, he needs to lie down. "You, my boy," and he points at Harry, "have talent. That's obvious. But it doesn't matter how much talent you have if you don't have the right management − who will remember you in ten years time if you stick on the path you're at? Today, you're a talented little singer. And that's alright."

Ben lets his gaze flicker over to Louis. The smile has left his face, now is features are stoic, proud; Ben has never wanted to punch someone more.

"But Louis can make you a star."

There's nothing else Ben can say, is there? No. They have Harry, hook, line and sinker. They had him, _Louis_ had him from the moment they set up this meeting. ("A chat, nothing else," Louis had reassured him a few days ago, his grip tight as he shook Ben's hand, acting like it was the first time they'd ever met.) Now, they're just stroking the kid's ego.

He could ask 'and how does he plan to do that?' But he can't. Ben can't let them win like that. So, instead, he gives it to Harry. He says, "Whatever you think-"

Ben never finishes the sentence. The pen is already in Harry's hand, signing his life away to Louis bloody Tomlinson.

He loses count of how many minutes he sits there after everyone else leaves.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 8 4 )_

"Did you ever see him again?" Zayn asks. "After he left with Louis, was there ever-"

Ben shakes his head. Zayn has a feeling if he asked him this ten years ago, maybe a couple before, he wouldn't look so calm about it. Instead, he gently says, "No. The morning Harry left with Louis was the last time I saw him." He laughs, short and loud, and says, "I did meet Nick, but it was before he had met Harry."

Zayn nods.

"I don't regret it, you know?" Ben says. Zayn feels like he's saying this more to him, a personal thing rather than something Zayn should put in the article despite the tape recorder still running between them on the table. "I don't regret letting him go, not fighting harder for him. I played my part as best I could and when Louis came, he was meant to take him."

He asks, "What makes you say that?"

"I wouldn't have any of this if I'd stayed with him."

At that, Zayn smiles. It's a nice house. It feels lived in, a proper family place for Ben and his wife and their two blonde children. There's a family portrait on the mantelpiece. There are children's books and crayons on the shelves, everything bordering on messy while still being put away. The organise chaos of a family home.

Ben apologises, "Sorry I couldn't be more help to you. There was a rumour a while ago Harry was working behind the scenes now, producing and writing for people but. I don't know how true that is. I have a feeling we would have heard if he was working again."

Zayn agrees with a brief nod. He stumbled across the same rumour but found nothing. "You've been great." He says, "Thank you for your time."

 

;;

 

Louis' apartment is practically the polar opposite of Ben's house.

It's lived in and there are little hints of a partner, someone living with him but nothing that would suggest children. Or even a dog. He gets shown into the living room − a lot of cream furniture and dark bookshelves with books arranged by height and colour, something Zayn really doesn't need to take a note of but something he catches and stores away anyway − and Louis asks, "Can I get you something to eat? Tea, coffee?"

He had about five cups back at Ben's place but Zayn's momma raised her son to accept things graciously when people offered and Zayn is nothing if not a fantastic guest. "Tea, please. But only if you're getting some yourself."

Like Ben, Louis asks how Zayn takes it.

When he has the cup in his hand, Louis takes a seat opposite Zayn and settles back into the cushions. Zayn doesn't want to complain, but he finds he has too many cushions supporting his back − he didn't know which ones he was allowed move and which ones were purely decorative so he sat against them all and elected to stay quiet.

Louis begins their conversation with, "I heard you were going to see Ben Winston this morning."

"I did," Zayn replies, just about swallowing down a mouthful of tea before he speaks.

"How was he?"

Zayn looks up from his notepad to Louis' face. He seems genuinely interested in how he is. (Then again, 1969 was a long time ago. People have grown up, moved on. Died and disappeared. It isn't that surprising it is all water under the bridge by now.) "He seems good, yeah. Happy. Settled."

"No hard feelings, then?"

"None from what I could tell," Zayn says with a laugh. It seems to put Louis at ease. He relaxes properly into the chair and takes a large drink from his cup. "I take it there was initially though?" He phrases it as a question although Louis strikes him as the type of person to rise to the bait of the words whatever way he said them.

Louis gives a small laugh. "Oh. Yeah. Absolutely. But back then, I didn't care." He wets the corner of his mouth with his tongue, breathing out slowly through his nose. He stares off at something on the ground, like there's a spot showing him pictures of the past, angled just so Zayn can't see "I was young, barely into my twenties, and I had signed somebody so marketable, so talented onto the label; I thought I had it made."

He pauses again, this time for longer.

Zayn takes a sip of his tea purely to pass the time.

"I should have known karma would throw something back at me. I just wasn't expecting it two fold."

Louis laughs at his own joke.

"You're talking about the twins, Gemma Arterton and Nick Grimshaw."

He nods, down, up and down again. "Who else?"

 

 

 

 

_0 0 3 ._  
_L O U I S_

_( 1 9 6 5  [ m o s t l y ] )_

Nick and Gemma are the firstborn and the last hope children of an unhappily married couple from Oldham in Greater Manchester. By the time his younger sister is born, Nick has lived through almost three years of his parents arguing with one another − his only solace from it all is the piano and despite being barely out of nappies, his aunt had taught him how to play _Twinkle Twinkle_ when she had last visited them for Christmas, so now, when the arguing and the fighting gets too bad, Nick clambers on top of the stool in front of the old Bechstein in the living room and hammers out the nursery rhyme until someone comes in and tells him to stop.

And now they'd brought another child into the mess.

So, it comes as no real surprise when their parents' divorce; their mother takes Nick to live with her sister − the same woman who taught Nick piano that Christmas − while Gemma ends up staying with their father. Nick learns the piano, becomes something of a musical virtuoso, and Gemma takes all manner of dance lessons. By the time she's 15 years old, Gemma has been cast as the one of the cygnets in _Swan Lake_ six times.

She's contemplating auditioning for the eponymous princess in _Sleeping Beauty_ the week before she runs away to London to find Nick. He's meant to be going to study music in King's; he lasts about the a month in the dorms before bailing completely and shacking up with a sort-of-not-really boyfriend in his flat. As soon as Gemma arrives on the doorstep, one braid completely falling apart over the ribbon and bruises on her knees where her socks and the hem of her skirt don't hide them, he ushers her in and never goes back to his classes.

"What should we do?" he asks, putting on the kettle.

Gemma wipes her nose on her sleeve. She spent half her money just trying to get to him. And she left her scarf on the train. It's been four days and no one's come looking for her yet. (That's how much their parents hate one another; there's no way Dad would call Mum to see if Gemma's turned up.) "Dunno. What you think we should do?"

Nick shrugs back at her. The sweater he's wearing isn't his. There are cigarette burns around the cuffs and the left elbow is totally worn out. Gemma wrinkles her nose at him. She's got their mum's eyes. So does Nick. "We could go somewhere."

"Yeah?" she replies. There's a smile hovering around her mouth, like she likes the idea but doesn't want to get too excited about it in case it's just her big brother winding her up. "Where could we go?"

He thinks about the savings he's got in the bank. And the money their mum (and Aunt Lucinda) put away for him so he could pay rent and buy books and _live_. If they find out they've done a runner, that money will stop but right now, while only Nick and Gemma know what they're planning to do, it should be enough to get them to Europe. Not America, no chance of that, but somewhere at least half interesting, like Paris or Barcelona.

"Where do you wanna go?"

This should be weird. Does it count as kidnapping? Cos technically Nick is the adult here. He should be packing his little sister back on a train to Manchester and calling their dad to say, "It's fine, I found her and she's on the 5 o'clock from King's Cross." But Nick isn't thinking about that − what he's doing is the wrong thing. But. He figures he owes her. She got left with their dad while he swanned off to live with Aunt Lucinda, only seeing her at Easter and Christmas. 

He hasn't bought her a birthday present in years.

Christ, what's he doing?

"C'mon," he ushers when Gemma says nothing. "Anywhere you really wanna see?"

"You sound like Dad," she informs him. Nick doesn't think she means it as an insult but it hits him somewhere in the chest, a slight sting to it. "Ever been to Rome?" she asks, next.

Nick shakes his head. "Wanna go?"

"Yeah." Gemma is beaming.

 

;;

 

They only stay in Rome for a week. Nick punches a guy for leering at his sister and the barman kicks them all out of the bar. They see the Colosseum on Tuesday and are in Greece by Wednesday night. They island hop until Nick meets a guy who sucks him off in the toilets − Gemma pretends not to know, feigning innocence and boredom (alright, the boredom might be real) when they come back out.

He offers Nick a job − because of the blowjob or not, Nick doesn't care − but hesitates before he offers one to Gemma.

"How old is she?" he asks, pointing at her but looking at Nick.

Gemma beats him to the punch. It's an easy lie. "We're twins."

For a second, the guy looks horrified. Because Gemma looks young, her knees still a bit knobbly and her face just this side of cute rather than pretty. And if they're twins, how old does that make Nick. Nick jumps right in, "We're 18, mate, calm down."

He visibly loosens, his shoulders dropping down as he breathes out a sigh of relief. "Right, good," he says, his accent heavy.

Nick gives Gemma a wink. They're twins now.

 

;;

 

The first guy to take Gemma's picture isn't anything special. Just some guy with a Canon who sees her emptying the ashtrays during a quiet lunch shift and asks if she'd mind. She doesn't get it at first but he explains, "Your cheekbones."

She gets caught between a smile and a frown all at once and the guy laughs. Gemma asks, "Where are you from?"

"France, Paris," and he snaps a picture.

"Really?" she replies, not bothering to pose but he isn't bothered by her not bothering so it doesn't seem to matter. "I've never been."

He asks, "Where are you from?" since that's the conversation they're having and turnabout is only fair.

"Manchester. England."

"And do all girls look like you in Manchester?"

His accent makes the city sound exotic. Gemma thinks of the concrete buildings and the estate she grew up in, trying to imagine the type of girls she went to school with. She wrinkles her nose. "Not really. I look like my brother."

"You must have a very beautiful family."

Gemma imagines if she were back in England, if she had stayed in school and got a Saturday job in the local tea shop or bakery, a line like that would have made her blush. Perhaps even giggle behind her hand. But here she is, Santorini, aged 16 and waiting tables in one of the few non-family run places in town and his words wash right over her. "I guess." She scratches the back of her neck and stares off at the ground. She doesn't know what to do with the compliment.

The camera lens clicks obnoxiously as he snaps one last photo.

He hands her a card and says, "If you're ever in Paris, come and see me. I'm Marc."

It says that on his card. Gemma has to tilt it towards the shadows to read it, tilting it away from herself because the gold, embossed writing is difficult to read against the beige card. "What? You mean, I don't get to see the photographs?"

He laughs as if she has told the funniest joke he has heard all day. "Of course not. My studio is in Paris − I shall develop the photos there." Gemma lets him leave without another word, pocketing his card and getting back to work. It's not until later, when she's working behind the bar with her brother, that she mentions the guy and his camera to Nick.

Gemma leads in with, "Ever thought about going to Paris?"

Nick looks at her, pulling a pint at the same time. "Have you suddenly got an urge to see the Eiffel Tower?"

She nudges him in the thigh with her knee, digging out ice from the bucket in front of them before dropping it into the cocktail shaker. "No." She draws out the vowel. "But some guy named Marc took my photo this afternoon but he says if I wanna see it, I have to go to Paris."

"He sounds like a creep, sis."

"He wasn't," she corrects. "He was just- He took my picture while I was working. Asked first and everything. Said I had good cheekbones." Nick remains unimpressed. "He even gave you a compliment." That perks him up. "Said we must be a beautiful family."

Nick nods, smiling. "He's not wrong."

They finish up the drinks they're making and Gemma lets the conversation. Nick hands the guy back his change while Gemma helps herself to a glass of water, filling it halfway and topping up the rest with ice. Nick waits, watching her for a second, then says, "You really want to see the photo, don't you?"

He isn't accusing her of being vain but.

When someone takes your picture, you want to see the end product. She hands Nick over the guy's card and places an ice cube on her tongue. It makes her cheek bulge out when she pushes it behind her teeth with her tongue. "Is your French any good?" he asks.

"About as good as my Greek."

 

;;

 

In Paris, Nick meets Cole. He's got awful tattoos and a quiff like Elvis. He tells Nick it's ironic − Nick doesn't agree but kisses him anyway. He says he's in a band when Nick says he can play piano. When he tells Gemma, she says, "So, he's a wanker then."

She speaks gutter Greek and passable French with a Parisian accent but nothing has ever taken away the Northern lilt in her English. Nick doesn't think he'd like her speaking any other way. "Probably," he agrees, lighting up a cigarette before passing her the lighter. "He says they could use a pianist."

"Wanker," she repeats, then adds, "You are too easy."

Nick figures she's probably right. They are twins after all.

He joins the band because he has nothing better to do. Musically, he's the most talented but even if he couldn't play all 30 minutes of Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor with his eyes closed, it wouldn't be that much of an accomplishment. At their first gig, in some underground club full of boys wearing as much eyeliner as the girls, a guy with bleached blonde hair approaches Gemma and says, "I saw your picture in a friend's gallery."

"Marc's," she returns, deciding to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. "I'm Gemma."

"I'm Mark as well. With a 'k'."

"Good for you."

His smile is almost a smirk. He chuckles. "So." His lisp endears him to her and Gemma lets her guard down a little, leaning back against the wall. He doesn't crowd in after her and she appreciates that. "How do you know this band?"

Gemma points. "That one's my brother."

"You look alike," he notes.

She smiles as she explains, "That's cos we're twins."

They don't stick around for much more of the set. When Mark leans in and asks if she wants to go back to his, his lips closer to the curve of her neck than to her ear, Gemma's hand is already on her coat. Nick won't mind as long as she's back in the hotel by morning; if this guy turns out to be a serial killer, Nick will be mad.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 7 0 )_

By the time Harry ever meets them, Gemma and Nick have been twins for five years. Nick's band have become 'Nick Grimshaw and the Paper Ships'; when their first album goes platinum across the UK and Ireland, Nick gets a tattoo of an anchor on his wrist. Gemma holds his hand while he gets it and he returns the favour when she gets the wing tattooed behind her ear. "It's easy to hide it behind my hair," she tells him.

By the time Nick and Gemma meet Harry, Gemms is _the_ It girl of the London scene. The November she wears a Burberry trench coat, it becomes _the_ Christmas present for girls aged between 12 and 25; it sells out before the second week of the month.

They wear equal amounts of makeup and share jeans and, on occasion, blouses. Nick puts Gemma on the front cover of the band's second album after her photo gets put in the main window of Selfridges on Oxford Street modelling a diamond earring and watch. That's how Harry recognises her, as she walks passed him wearing a pair of red wellingtons and a white wide brimmed felt hat.

In the middle of a festival on the Isle of Wight, Harry tips Louis' arm and tells him, "That's her."

"Who?" Louis doesn't really follow.

"Gemma."

Louis remains lost. With a deeply dramatic sigh, Harry says, "The model. She's _everywhere_ at the moment; you can't walk down a street without seeing her face." At this point, Harry is sure Louis is winding him up. "And her brother's in that band. The Paper Ships."

"Oh. Yeah."

"I'm gonna go talk to her," Harry states.

Louis grabs at his sleeve, one finger meeting skin but the rest grabbing cuff. "You're on in ten minutes."

"So I'll talk to her for nine."

 

;;

 

"You can't own property on this place if you aren't born here," Nick says, sounding out each syllable carefully, trying to sound proper while blitzed out of his mind. "Or if you're married to someone from here. But as soon as you're divorced, poof, you can't own what you own anymore."

With one arm around Nick's sister and one arm around his girlfriend, Matt replies, "That's Jersey, mate."

Louis can't tell who is holding up who. Gemma looks tired, like she wants to crawl into bed and sleep for the rest of the weekend. Louis kind of wants to run over and hold her hand. A bit. Harry is wearing her hat.

"Where are we going?" she asks.

Matt lets her go and Alexa's on his mouth, smearing crimson lipstick across Matt's ridiculous cheekbones before Gemma is fully gone. They're all so thin. Maybe they should find somewhere to get food? Louis reaches for her, stumbling awkwardly towards her as they walk. She takes his hand to keep him standing.

When he looks over at Harry, he's got himself tucked under Nick's arm.

"Back to the hotel," someone eventually answers. Cole or Matt or Alexa. Louis really wants to lie down right here, right now, on the street. And cuddle someone. Maybe Gemma if she'll come with him. Would a model want to cuddle with him if he lay down on the street? He's not sure. He could probably drag her down with him if he went. They are holding hands after all.

"The hotel's the other way," Gemma replies. She points over her shoulder with her thumb.

Louis looks back. Like he knows where their hotel is. Maybe they're staying in the same hotel?

"Is it?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"Fuck it," Nick announces. "I've found a playground."

They sleep propped up against trees or sprawled out across the grass that night, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. (Or something.)

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 7 1 )_

They become a unit. Harry Styles and Nick Grimshaw, with Nick's sister Gemma somewhere in the background. They don't tour together, per se, but they're always together anyway. For New Year's Eve, they all head for Edinburgh. Louis kisses Cole at midnight mostly because he can't find Harry. According to everyone, he and Nick are fucking but Louis is still waiting for Harry to come to him and tell him.

Around two, he finds Gemma. She's nursing the last few mouthfuls of a glass of gin and there's silver confetti sparkling in her dark hair.

She has one of those faces. One of those stupidly confusing faces that throws Louis every time he looks at it. At first glance, she looks like every other dark haired, dark eyed girl he could pass on the street. But something draws him in and he has to take a second look. Then the pieces of her face, each feature starts working alone − the shape of her mouth, the flecks of gold in her eyes, the freckles across her nose. That's probably why she's such a good model; people think they've seen her before, girls like her are ten a penny, but then they're lured in. Louis finds the more he looks at her, the fewer and fewer similarities he sees between her and Nick.

"You want this?" she offers, arm extended. Water droplets from the condensation have gathered around her fingers. Louis could go for something cold and the bar feels a million miles away right now. He accepts it with a smile and takes the seat beside her.

"Happy New Year," he toasts.

She leans in and returns the sentence to him. Her head meets his shoulder. Glitter falls out of her hair and onto his sweater − Louis can't see it happen but he feels it. He finishes off the drink and looks at her. Gemma breathes in and out. In and out, slowly. Like the steady beat of time passing. In and out. The air ghosts passed his throat, rasping across his skin.

One hundred other men in his position would kiss her. Would kiss any girl leaning into them like this on New Year's Eve but especially Gemma. Yet Louis doesn't.

A large part of him wants to.

Another part wants to ask her what she knows about her brother and Harry. He does neither and before the clock turns 2:15am, Gemma is asleep on his shoulder and Louis is left with a glass of melting ice and nowhere else to go.

 

;;

 

March is when Harry finally tells Louis about him and Nick.

Louis pretends like it's the first he's heard about it, because that's what Harry wants. And Harry always gets what he wants. Except-

"I don't think Gemma likes me."

Louis watches him carefully, reading over schedules and notes from the record label, a few newspaper clippings of reviews thrown in the mix for good measure. He eyes Harry as he sits quietly in his chair, biting at his thumbnail. "I can't say for definite or not but. She doesn't seem to- it's like there's a wall." He nods his head, more certain of himself as he says, "She has a wall up against me."

"I'm sure it's nothing personal."

In Louis' opinion, she's tired. She hasn't stopped since God only knows when and now she's not only got her brother to deal with, but Harry as well. Two musicians' egos in one place. Louis sort of feels sorry for her.

In front of him, Harry pouts like a child.

"I'm sure she likes you," Louis corrects himself and under the desk, his toe finds Harry's shin. It gets a response from him, as someone kicking another person in the shin always does, but he quickly soothes with a smile. "She just doesn't know you properly. You _do_ spend all your time with her brother." Harry smiles at that.

"And you," he adds.

"And me."

It's the little things like that that make it so easy to say yes when Harry pulls Louis in later, when all the works been put away and everyone's distracted by someone else and Harry is acting like Louis is the only person he wants to be around right now. The only person he wants to kiss despite hours ago admitting to Louis he has been fucking Nick since pretty much the day they met, back on the Isle of Wight. But Louis lets himself take it, because Harry is offering and when it comes down to it, Louis is as greedy with Harry's affection as Harry is with everyone's attention.

They stumble into the first available room and Louis fucks Harry into the sheets, only realising afterwards, as Harry's come is going cold on the mattress beneath them, that this is Gemma's bed.

"She's probably not gonna like you after this," Louis says, running a hand through his sweaty hair. His fringe is ruined but when Harry curls himself, languid and catlike into his side he can't find a reason to care. "We can always strip the sheets in the morning. Put fresh ones on. Then she might think you're great."

Harry chuckles into the jut of Louis' collarbone. "Cos I changed her sheets for her?"

"I dunno, mate. Girls are weird like that, aren't they? Plus, if she doesn't know you got spunk on them," he explains, "she might think you're just being nice."

Harry hums.

"We shouldn't tell her that part."

"It's for the best," Louis agrees.

 

;;

 

Coke always makes Louis chattier than usual. He feels it fizzing away inside him; he almost wants to twitch with it but instead, he orders himself a rum and coke and sits himself down at the table. The music, something by _Roxy Music_ they've been playing non-stop on the radio for weeks, keeping both Harry and Nick's new singles from the #1 spot, makes him wants to dance. He makes do with tapping his toe in time to the rhythm.

"Y'alright there?" Alexa asks.

Lazily, Louis gives her a grin. She reaches over and rustles a hand through his hair. It probably sticks out at dreadful angles but Louis can't bring himself to care. "You're cute," she tells him.

Louis should argue. He should stand up for himself and shake his head, inform her he's manly, all over, and not in the slightest bit cute but he doesn't. Because Alexa is the most beautiful girl Louis has ever seen. Right now. And doing that may upset her and all he wants to do is keep her smiling. And looking at him with those big, smoky blue eyes of hers.

Her gaze flickers off to the left for a moment.

He feels a whine build in his throat, but then Alexa is laughing and nudging at his shoulder with the flat of her hand, trying to get him to turn around. "Look," she orders.

Turning around, it takes Louis a few seconds to figure out what she's trying to point at. But he gets there in the end. There, in the middle of the bar, one hand flat against the wall, Harry has Gemma trapped in a conversation with him. She looks neither happy nor displeased to be there, but caught somewhere in the middle − somewhere around mild disinterest and wondering if she can get him to buy her another drink.

"He is working overtime on that one," she remarks. It isn't callous or cruel, just a statement of fact.

Louis hears how childish his own tone is, but he can't help it. "He's already got Nick."

"Well," Alexa counters, "they come as a pair, don't they?" She leans in, like she's about to tell Louis a secret. Maybe it is. Or maybe it's only a rumour. There are so many stories that hover between the balance of fact and fiction about everyone in London these days, Louis can't tell any more. "The first guy Nick ever slept with, he fucked Gemma too."

His eyes widen.

"You know, they're not even twins."

"Really?"

Alexa rolls her eyes at him, shaking her head but still managing to keep the gesture fond. "Nick's three years older than her."

Louis does the math in his head. He's rather proud of himself for how quickly he does it. "So, Nick's actually 28?"

She shakes her head.

"No. Gemma's really 22. They just tell people they're twins."

He has to ask. "Why?" He has to.

"No idea. They just do." She pauses, looking down at her empty glass. Even all the ice has gone. "It's kinda obvious they aren't when you think about it though."

Louis has no idea what she's talking about.

 

;;

 

It continues like this for months. Harry fucking Louis and Nick and the two of them pretending they don't know. It's easier that way, to pretend that Harry doesn't need all the attention, doesn't need everyone to love him to function; Louis knows he would drive himself mad if he actually stopped and thought about how selfish Harry is. Anyway, when Harry is with him, he is _with_ him. He always stays the night, never says the wrong name but in the morning, he's back all over Nick until the next day, when he's Louis' again. Louis accepts that is just the way it is.

But there's also Gemma.

Sure, she talks to Harry now. She laughs at his jokes and sometimes holds his hand when they're walking home after a night out − more than one, they've been photographed together, sparking rumours across the papers and gossip columns. 

But still. 

There's a wall, Harry was right. And yet, he keeps trying. Because he needs her to love him. He needs her to want him the way Nick does, the way Louis does.

One night in July Louis finds Nick and Gemma together. The show ended hours ago, the afterparty pretty much over as people fade off into the distance and only those who really matter (those people who would be called friends in any other situation but weren't quite in this one) hanging on, pairing off and finding places to grope each other and sleep. And Louis finds Nick cradling his sister, her head pillowed on his lap.

It must be one Hell of a comedown.

Gemma's face is wet with tears. She isn't crying, but she was and a few droplets still cling to their path along her cheekbones. Blood speckles the space around her nostrils, the colour of it dark against her pale skin. Gently, Nick strokes her hair. She sniffs. It sounds wet, snotty. Utterly and completely like a child. "You're ok," Nick tells her. She rolls over at his words. Louis spots the blood staining down the front of her shirt, grotesque and gory. It's more than a bad comedown then.

Nick leans in, his nose tipping the end of his sister's, and softly he says, "I've got you." Then, with a hint of a smile in his voice, "Maybe a little less next time, yeah?"

Gemma nods. Their foreheads touch. Louis feels like he's invading, something so oddly sacred and personal, like he's stumbled into someone's private wedding, inebriated and uninvited. The thought doesn't make him move all the same. 

He feels someone press up against him, a chin hook over his shoulder to peer into the room.

Louis turns to see who it is as Gemma says, "We should go home, Nick." He shushes her, lightly, pulling her up and into his chest and muffling whatever she says next as Harry smiles at Louis. Louis tries to return it, but all he can think of is Gemma's tears, Gemma's blood soaking into her brother while he holds her. Harry looks back at them.

"Is she alright?" Louis asks.

Like Harry knows. Like Harry has all the answers. Fuck. It's nearly dawn and Louis is standing in a hallway, hovering by a barely open door just to see how this plays out. He should go. He should walk away and go to bed and sleep until someone comes to get him in the morning because the phone has been ringing and no one else is answering it.

He opens his mouth to tell Harry his plans but Harry has a hand on the doorknob.

Louis steps back in fright. The hinges of the door creak sharply as he enters. Nick looks up at him − looks at Harry but misses Louis standing there. Gemma stays with her face buried into her brother's chest.

He uses a soft voice − the softest one Louis has ever heard Harry use outside of sex − when he speaks. He says, "Everything ok?" and presses a hand into the curve of Gemma's back once he has dropped down to their height. Gemma lifts her face away from Nick, turning to Harry. In the faint light of the room, Louis sees how the blood around her nose glistens, not yet fully dry. "Hi," Harry says.

She looks as if she is about to burst into tears all over again.

On Gemma's back, Nick's fingertips touch Harry's. Louis feels like an alien, completely separate from the room, outside it by only a step. But- No one says anything else. The only sounds are the light inhale and exhale of breaths and, if Louis listens carefully, the sound of Gemma's blouse underneath Harry's wide palm as he soothes his hand up and down. Up and down and knocking his fingertips into Nick's every time. As he watches, Louis feels himself take a step further into the room. He's in it now. Properly. But at the same time, outside still. Despite a floorboard creaking under his foot, none of them look back at him.

Harry inhales a breath the same was he always does when he's about to speak. Louis leans in, ready to do whatever Harry says. Instead, Harry says, "C'mon." 

It's for Gemma.

He gets his hand settled solidly on her side − not before his fingertips touch Nick's one last time − and nudges her arm with his shoulder until Gemma moves it around his neck. She goes to him with a soft sigh. Her mouth touches Harry. Now there's her blood on all three of them. Louis has to turn his gaze away as the thought rushes into his head.

Fuck.

All three of them. Nick and Gemma and Harry and Gemma and Nick and Harry. Each one of them, stained with her blood.

When Harry lifts her, pulling himself back to full height and tucking one arm around her back and one under the curve of her knees, Louis becomes the only person in the room who can see her face. It's terrifying. She looks so sad and sorry and happy, all at the same time. All piled on top of each other and mixing up her features.

"I'll take her to bed," Harry says to Nick.

For a moment, the briefest of heartbeats between them all, Nick looks like he's about to argue. But. Putting her in bed is better than having her lying on the floor. Nick says, "I'll come and-" but he lets the sentence go, letting the last 'd' drift off until he's out of breath.

Harry nods.

"Yeah."

To Louis, he says, "Get the door." That's his only instruction, but Louis follows them silently down the corridor to Gemma's room. He opens the door because that's what he had previously been told to do. "Thanks," Harry says and, maybe Gemma says it too but it gets buried in the curve of Harry's throat.

Harry has her mostly on the bed when Gemma whispers, "He should have put me on the train home."

Louis has no idea what she's talking about but Harry just gently shushes her, cups her cheek in the palm of his hand and strokes her hair away from her neck. "It's alright," he tells her.

Her fingers wrap around his wrist. Louis stares at them. They're so thin, like they're purely bone and skin covering them. Long and thin like the rest of her and wrapped around Harry's wrist. His thumb bobs against her throat when she swallows. "Don't go." It sounds like begging.

Louis can't handle this. He attempts to edge towards the door but Harry catches him, turning to look at him over his shoulder. "Lou."

"I-"

Nothing he can say will stop Harry looking at him like that. He feels himself sigh.

They arrange themselves on the bed − Harry in the middle, bracketed by the other too. When Harry rolls over, pulling Gemma in against him, Louis feels useless. There is no point in him being here but- Harry asked. Harry said his name and looked at him. And Nick never came.

 

;;

 

"They're not twins, you know?" Louis says. Harry looks up from his guitar and shoots Louis a frown. His fingers move along the fret. "Alexa told me." He hasn't got a reason for telling Harry; it isn't really that important whether Gemma and Nick are twins or not but they haven't told him yet. Almost a year on and they haven't told him. Harry returns to his guitar, half heartedly picking at chords but never going anywhere definite. Louis doesn't know why but he feels an odd burst of triumph in his chest.

 

;;

 

Their birthday is August 30.

New York, August 30 1971. The Syracuse Hotel. Harry glitters like a disco ball, his silver leggings sparkling and throwing light at Gemma as he walks towards her. Mockingly, she shields her eyes but she laughs at the same time.

He parks himself in the chair beside her. Slowly, her hand reaches over and plucks a feather out of his hair. They've been falling out and getting caught in his hair − and other people's hair, and that woman in the lift's angora sweater − all night. "You can keep that," he tells Gemma, who admires the blue feather for a moment before tucking it behind her ear. "Souvenir."

"I'll treasure it," she remarks. It's dripping with sarcasm.

"Until you lose it."

"Something like that."

She has a drink in her hand that is still quite full − Harry lets his gaze linger on the rim of the glass between her fingers. Around them the speakers are playing T-Rex, an album track Nick has been humming to himself for the past number of weeks. Harry doesn't know the words yet but he finds himself humming along, tapping the toe of his platform boots off the carpeted floor; he feels the need to do something with his mouth.

When he looks up, Gemma is looking down. The glitter on her cheek practically winks at him in the light.

"So," he begins, getting her attention. "Is it your birthday or Nick's?"

She answers easily. "Nick's." But quickly, she realises her mistake. Harry just grins, perhaps a little close to a smirk because Gemma pulls back. She goes for the obvious, "How did you know?"

Harry considers his answer. It seems too close to ratting Louis out if he tells her the truth and it isn't really a lie when he eventually says, "Alexa." Because Alexa _did_ tell Louis − the information originated from her, Louis just filtered it on.

Gemma clucks her tongue off her teeth and lifts her glass to take a drink. Harry goes back to watching her fingers around the rim of the glass. Absently, he wets his bottom lip with his tongue. "I told Nick not to tell her," she eventually says after swallowing. "How long have you known?"

He shrugs.

"When's your birthday then?" he asks. He knows he sounds curious but he hopes it has fallen into desperation. (He tends to get a little more manic when he's been drink. And. Fuck. They've been drinking all day.)

"Honestly?" Harry nods. "Day after yours."

He can't help the smile that spreads across his face at that.

 

;;

 

After Louis swallows, he leans his cheek on the jut of Harry's hip and breathes hot against his sweaty skin. Harry's fingers stay in his hair, teasing along his sweaty scalp; Louis feels beads of it on his forehead but can't find the effort or energy to lift his hand and wipe it away.

Harry hums, the same way he always does when he's thinking.

Louis sighs, eyeing a freckle on his thigh, and asks, "What?" It's just easier that way.

"Nothing," is what he gets in reply.

Lifting himself onto his elbow, Louis sighs again, more harshly this time. His wrist knocks into Harry's pelvis, a complete accident, but it's obviously hard enough to have annoyed him because Harry looks up at him with a frown. "What?" they says in unison.

It's almost comedic enough to laugh at. Almost.

Louis beats him to it, getting out, "What are you thinking?" before Harry can properly get his tongue around words.

"It's not important," he retorts childishly.

It makes a satisfyingly loud thwack when Louis flicks his hipbone with his middle finger. Harry glares at him, nostrils flaring. "Tell me," he urges, as Harry throws his head back on the pillows with an agitated huff. He punctuates each word with a flick of his finger, softer than before but just as annoying. "Tell me what you're thinking."

"You won't care."

Harry reaches up and covers his face with his hands. His next exhale is muffled, the air squeezing itself out through the gaps between his fingers. Just for good measure, Louis flicks him again. "I know when her birthday is."

Louis doesn't need to ask who.

His next flick is hardest of all. It lands close to his dick, where Harry is oversensitive. The way he jerks, hissing in pain, is so beautiful satisfying to Louis right now.

 

;;

 

It isn't that-

It-

Louis feels dizzy, his head all over the place. 

Gemma has a tattoo along her flank. 

He chooses to focus on that than anything else. He can't read it, not with Harry's fingers blocking half of the letters but Louis stares at it. He knew she had the wing behind her ear, a tiny wing mostly hidden by her hair but sometimes. Just sometimes visible when she brushes it away from her neck. But this is. New.

It isn't that he's upset (annoyed, disappointed, angry) he has caught Harry with Gemma. He's been waiting to hear it from someone − Alexa; Alexa is usually good at passing on gossip − about Harry and Gemma but. Stumbling across it himself is-

Nick and Harry have been fucking for the best part of a year and Louis has never so much as seen their hands linger too close together. Now Louis is watching Harry's hands slip up the curve of Gemma's ribs, her knees spread either side of his thighs. And he can't look away.

All Louis wanted was a glass of water. He rose out of bed with the singular purpose of going to the kitchen, getting himself a drink and returning to bed. The rest of the place is quiet. The rest of the house is sleeping and Louis' glass of water is slowly warming between the heat of his fingers. Gemma gasps something out and Louis nearly drops the glass.

Harry bites her neck.

Christ.

Louis returns to staring at the tattoo on her side. Fixed to the spot outside Harry's bedroom door, Louis focuses on Gemma's tattoo because it's the easiest thing to focus on.

Harry whispers, "Please," into the curve of her neck.

Louis swallows down something in his throat, the noise wet and loud. He stops breathing for a moment, then longer, the noise of his swallow echoing in his ears − he stands there, frozen with fear that either one has heard him. Instead, Harry says, "Please," again, this time a little louder. They have no idea Louis is there at all.

He exhales and does the only thing he can do- 

Louis bolts.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 8 4 )_

"The more it went on, the more Harry needed her to need _him_ , the more I realised I was going to lose him. To her." Louis cuts himself off with a laugh, the sound cold and hollow and coming straight from the pit of his stomach. "Gemma didn't even want him. Not really. Not the way Harry wanted her to. But it went on − Harry had Nick, he had fame, he had money, he had me but he still had to have her."

Zayn watches him. Carefully, quietly. Louis is still staring at that spot on the ground, the same space since he started telling the story.

"But she wanted to leave. And Harry was dumb enough, so convinced he had to be in love with her, that he would have followed." When he stops, he lifts his eyes. There's a sad smile spread across his face. "So, I did the one thing I could think of to keep him."

"Which was?"

Louis sighs. "I asked her to marry me."

Of all the stories, both rumour and fact, Zayn has heard about these people, somehow the fact, the God's honest truth that Louis Tomlinson proposed to Gemma Arterton is something everyone missed. He feels his mouth drop open, eyes widening in shock.

Louis explains, "When it all came down to it, we were all selfish people. Selfish, decadent people who wanted too much. It wasn't just Harry, although he may have been the worst. But I was pretty bad myself. Cos I knew if had Gemma, if I could make her happy enough to stay with us. With _me_ , then I'd have Harry too." He drops his eyes back to the spot on the floor. "It almost worked."

"Did it?"

"For a while."

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 7 2 )_

He pulls her away from the party before she's even in the door. It's the easiest thing he's ever done and Gemma turns to him with a smile. She follows.

Later, she smiles again, when she's spread across his lap and all Louis can focus on is her. The angle of her hips, the white fingerprints he leaves behind when he presses too hard, the sweat that makes her hair stick to her neck and throat. His dick inside her and how she gasps when she pulls off him and he pushes up after her, never letting her get properly away.

When Gemma tips forward the ends of her hair tickle at Louis' chest. Her whine breaking off into a moan. Louis wants her to make that noise again, moving one hand from her hip to her back and letting his fingertips slip along the notches of her spine.

"Louis," she whispers, mouth hovering near his and the air ghosting along his cheek.

Harry said 'please' for her; Gemma says his name for Louis. Something harsh, almost uncomfortable coils, tightens in his stomach as he realises this. Louis pulls her back onto his lap, fucking up into her and making her eyes flutter closed.

The glitter around her eyes has spread down to the line of her cheekbone.

Louis has no words.

She leans in again, closer this time, and her teeth and tongue stroke his skin as she repeats his name. His name and a gentle 'fuck'. Louis digs his nails into the flesh of her thigh. Gemma keens into him − it's almost a headbutt but Louis catches her chin with his mouth, licks the sweat from her jaw. She bites him in return, unexpected and painful. His knee jerks in shock before his orgasm hits him, taking him completely by surprise. When she slaps him, hissing out, "No, no, no," into his shoulder, her nails sting against his skin.

Cupping her neck, he soothes with quick little 'it's ok, it's ok'.

He flips them, awkwardly − a knee to Gemma's back and her hand flailing, scrambling quickly and digging her nails into his shoulder − but gets her onto her back. His dick slips out somewhere in the movement, the condom heavy with his spunk and it takes him more than a second to get it off, hissing at the sensitivity of everything.

Looking up, he sees Gemma reaching down to touch herself, and Louis barks out, "No." It comes out heavier, more brutish than he means to, so when he wraps his fingers around her wrist to pull her hand away, he gently flips it and lifts it to his mouth, placing a kiss above the pulse. 

It beats once against his lips.

"Let me," he says, going for a soft sigh but it comes out needy. More vulnerable than he means it to.

Gemma gives him a nod.

Louis gets her hips pulled in front of him, his shoulder pressed up against her thigh and two fingers inside her. Gemma gasps at something he does, the crook of his fingers and the width of his knuckles where she's wet and soft, deliciously pink. Her knee knocks against him as he moves his fingers again, curling them and smirking up at her when she bites her lip.

It's taken them over a year to get here. Over a year and a hundred variations of themselves, all the moods and feelings and outfits and hairstyles but Louis decides, right here and now as Gemma's thigh trembles and she fucks herself back into his hand as best she can with the angle he has her at, that this Gemma, open, carnal, quivering with the need to come, with the need for him (Louis − Louis Louis _Louis_ , she said his name while Harry begged her 'please') to _make_ her come, is his favourite. He thinks, he really thinks if he could keep her like this, if he could always have her with her legs spread and tiny whimpers leaving her mouth, just them and this bed and no one else, then perhaps- then maybe. . .

He shakes the thought away as he leans in, pivoting his hand on his wrist.

She reaches down with her left hand and touches his ear.

"Louis," she says. She sounds so much more solid than he did before, despite their positions. He nods. God only knows why but Louis nods.

She repeats his name again, pushed out on an exhale. And Louis wets his mouth with his tongue.

He asks, "Can I?" He tilts her hips up further, angles them to make it easier on his neck. He doesn't wait for an answer. (Because she's not going to say no. Not now, not with her hips pushing into his hand and his fingers wet inside her and the soft way she keeps repeating his name. But it's always polite to ask.) 

Her fingers stroke his hair as his mouth pushes into her. He catches her clit against his tongue, humming lightly as she shifts her hips against him. Louis hums again and loosens his grip on her hips, giving over control. She whines at it and gets a better grip of his hair. He feels her nails scrape his scalp where he's sweaty, the slightly sting of pressure making him close his eyes.

Both of them groan at the first ring of the phone.

Louis pulls away just enough to tell her, "Ignore it."

Gemma buries her face underneath the crook of her elbow, still working her hips but in smaller circles. "What if it's-"

Quickly, Louis buries the rest of her question with, "Ok, answer it. Ok." He doesn't want to hear who she thinks it may be.

With one hand, Gemma holds his hair. With the other, she answers the phone. It's Nick's voice on the other end − Louis can't decide if that's better or worse than he had imagined − he can't make out proper words but he knows it's Nick. Gemma breathes out a sigh. "I'm back at the hotel," she answers.

Because he can, Louis twists his fingers. He opens his mouth and lets his exhale wash over her. He savours the way her breath hitches, hips jerking forwards towards him again.

She pulls his hair and tells Nick, "No. No, I'm fine."

Louis chooses to ignore her, ignore the painful way Gemma tugs his hair and fights to hold him in place, her wrist quaking with the effort, and places his tongue back on her. His fingers make a delicious wet sound as he moves them, brushing over her in broad, slow strokes of his tongue as she tries to talk to her brother who is high and drunk and standing on the phone in God knows where. It's unfair, yes, but all Louis wants to do right now is make her come. All he wants to do is watch her fall apart and see if she says his name differently when she does; differently to the other ways she said it before. 

With all his attention focused between her legs, caught fascinated watching what makes her roll her hips to him and what makes her pull away, scratching her nails along the thin skin at the nape of his neck, swallowing hard to hide what she's doing from Nick, Louis misses when she hangs up.

He doesn't hear a 'goodbye' or a 'talk to you in the morning' from her, just gets her cunt shoved further into his mouth. He hums, pleased with himself, and fucks her slowly with his fingers.

Later, hours later. After he's got her off twice more, a second time with his mouth − "Nick disturbed the last one, please. Let me," and Gemma had gone pliant and loose and let Louis spread her open with his thumbs and look his fill before licking into her − and once with his fingers, and Gemma has sucked him off and swallowed, she lies with her head pillowed somewhere between Louis' hip and stomach, her fingers tracing through the drying spit and spunk on his softening dick. Louis is too sated and far up the bed from her to tell her to stop, and he finds himself stroking her hair and asking:

"You ok?"

She nods, staying quiet.

"Are you happy?"

Lightly − so light he almost misses it − Gemma kisses his hip and says, "Yeah. Yes. I'm good." She doesn't return the question because she doesn't need to. (Or she doesn't care, but right now Louis is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.)

He strokes her hair again and asks, "Will you marry me?"

Gemma doesn't answer and in the morning, she's gone and so is one of Louis' favourite shirts. He comes down for breakfast to find her wearing it, the top four buttons undone and her clavicles exposed in an almost obscene fashion. Next to her, Nick nurses an orange juice, his pallor green-grey and his head against the soft flesh of his sister's upper arm.

 

;;

 

Harry never says anything because Gemma never tells. She never says anything about her personal life, to interviewers or friends alike and even though everything thinks that something happened between Gemma and Matt in Paris, no one knows for sure because Gemma isn't saying.

So, Harry never says anything.

Louis supposes he's still fucking both of them. Once, in the middle of a phonecall with the London HQ, Louis had considered the idea that Harry was having both of them at the same time. An incestuous little threesome for the biggest thing to come out of England since the Beatles; the right amount of shock and theatricality for someone like Harry and Nick. But. Gemma isn't like that and Louis had sighed loudly to himself and promised his boss Harry's next single would be completed soon.

Harry writes all his best stuff about people he could be in love with.

About girls he spies for split fragments of time in the front row of his concerts, screaming out for him to love them. About guys he fucks in the bathrooms round the back of venues, roadies with nice smiles and his face across their black t-shirts. About Louis and Nick and the mess of feelings and touches and everything else in between. (Louis likes to think he doesn't look too deeply into Harry's music but two singles ago, it was obvious what that B-Side was about.) 

Now he's waiting for Harry to come to him with something about Gemma.

 

;;

 

"Nick. No."

She sounds so angry it is terrifying. There's a scuffing noise − a noise like she pushed Nick away or tugged her hand away from him so violently she sent herself stumbling backwards − and Nick makes a hurt, indignant noise.

"Just. Stop," Gemma says. "Why can't you stop?" Louis waits outside the door, hand hovering above the knob ready to go in and find Harry but. 

He has seen the twins fighting before. This huge, dramatic spectacle that ends with broken furniture and both of them crying and Harry standing on the sidelines, both proud and upset at the chaos in the room. Louis isn't in the right mind frame to deal with it right now. But, as with so many other moments in the last year and a half, he finds himself frozen to the spot and waiting for the moment, for the tiny thing to happen which will make him move.

The door opens and he jumps back like a frightened cat, landing on his feet. Gemma stares at him, her cheeks pink and her chest rising and falling quickly. She is wearing his shirt again. The one she stole from him that night.

"Harry's in there," she says.

Louis folds the piece of paper in his hands. It can wait; Harry can wait. He follows Gemma down the hall, stumbling a little on an overturned corner of a Persian rug. "Everything alright?" he asks, finally caught up. Gemma pushes the button for the lift and shrugs afterwards. "I couldn't help overhearing."

With that, she looks at him. Properly. Her face moves into a frown.

"It's- them. You know?" Louis nods because he does. He knows exactly what she means. "They won't stop."

Louis catches her and pulls her into a hug. The mechanism of the lift whirs as it rises up the floors to them, rattling away on the other side of the steel doors. "They don't- they need to slow down." Louis wants to agree but finds his face is too comfortable buried in the curve of her neck. On the gentle jut of her clavicle, he places a kiss. Gemma hums. "He should have put me on the train. Things would be so much easier if he had just put me on the train."

Against her, Louis breathes. In and out and in again, counting off the seconds. He doesn't have anything to say − to be honest, he still isn't too sure what she means. Slowly, Gemma lifts her hand and strokes his back. She smells like freshly showered skin and the underlying, darker smell of woman underneath. With his lips pressed against her flesh, Louis asks, "Are you ok?"

"I will be," she returns.

And it's true. 

The next night, with some stupidly twee song Louis thinks his grandparents danced to at their wedding playing in the background, Nick takes his sister's hand and they slow dance together and wear the same smile on their faces.

Pressed up together like that, it's easy to trap their conversation between them.

They aren't really twins. They barely grew up together. So, there's no secret language, no facial codes or looks that convey a thousand sentences. No, all they have are words and tonight, Gemma's are: "Let's go somewhere quiet."

Her hair has grown so long the ends brush off Nick's hand against the small of her back.

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know." Gemma shakes her head and leans in closer, pushing into her brother's space and sighs. Nick cradles her tighter. There's nothing else he can do. "I just want to go."

He asks, "Forever?"

"I want you to come with me."

This is an argument they have had before and if Nick is honest, he can see them having it again. Again and again until they're old and grey, withered skin and varicose veins and false teeth. But tonight, he isn't in the mood for arguing. Not with Gemma in that dress and the music the way it is. It has been raining all weak but tonight there's a break in the weather − Nick wants it to be a good omen. He doesn't want to fight. He says, "Tell me where you want to go and we'll go."

Gemma sighs.

It feels like the beginning of something.

 

;;

 

"I don't care that you're fucking my sister," Nick says. The glass of whiskey in his hand is almost empty but there is only about half a glass more left in the bottle he and Harry opened a while back. "I don't care. Really." He wants Harry to understand that. Repeating it seems like the simplest way to get the point across. "But don't- don't fuck her up. Yeah?"

Harry looks at him, wide eyed and hurt. But Nick keeps going.

"Don't promise her things. Don't say things just to make her happy."

 

;;

 

"What does this say?" he asks, tracing his lips along the words, bumping off each of her ribs as he travels higher.

Gemma lets go of Louis' hair and breathes slowly. He lets his mouth travel back down across the letters of the tattoo, then places a proper kiss on the full stop at the end of the tattoo. "Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes," she sounds out. It sounds perfect, but Louis never paid attention in Latin classes in school. After a moment, Louis quietly watching her while she breathes, Gemma translates, "Abandon all hope, you who enter here."

He laughs. Because it's funny. Isn't it?

He asks, "Why did you get it?"

Gemma just looks at him sadly, staying silent. Without taking his eyes from her face, Louis kisses her ribs again, between the o and vos. It seems to settle her, whatever magic he places in his lips upon that place. "Did you really mean it?" she asks, breaking the quiet.

Louis breathes out across her, following the air with his fingers and underneath her skin, the muscles in her stomach move, ticklish. "Mean what?"

"When you asked me to marry you?"

He had given up trying to get her to give him an answer, afraid of the look her face took whenever he mentioned it, the way her eyes suddenly got wide, like a frightened animal ready to bolt. But now they look back at him, frightened in a different way − worried more than frightened, yes, that is a better word Louis decides − and he can't tell what she's thinking. (He never can, really. Not like he can with Harry, who shows his emotions like a child, heart on his sleeve in the worst sense of the phrase, sometimes so emotionally exposed and obvious Louis wants to do nothing more than shake him and tell him to shut up, he can't have it his way all the time.) He reaches up and touches her face, the bone of her jaw moving under his fingers, as if allowing him into her space, and Louis answers, "Yes. Of course."

It's a lie. Sort of. But the way the words make her mouth turn into a smile makes them easier to believe them coming out of his lips.

"Will you marry me?" he asks, because that's what Gemma is looking for. And if Louis can keep her (can keep her and keep Harry and Nick with her) then he's willing to say it.

She never says it aloud. But there's a nod. There's a nod and Louis smiles, shifting up her torso and pulling her onto her back to kiss her.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 7 3 )_

Harry pulls her back.

"Don't marry him," he says. It sounds nothing like begging. Nothing like it at all. Just a cold, solid statement of words. Gemma laughs. Harry moves his hand from her wrist to her palm, staring down in shock when she tangles their fingers up together. "Don't marry Louis."

She squeezes their hands tighter. "Why not? Why shouldn't I?"

Harry falters for a moment. He takes a step purely for something to do with himself, takes a step and bumps his free hand off her hip. His fingers graze along the line of her side until they fit underneath the hem of her shirt, a faded, well-worn t-shirt that is not hers nor Nick's nor Harry's but a strange amalgamation of all of theirs. A collective thing. (Louis has never worn it. Gemma can't marry Louis.)

In two places Harry touches her skin. He swallows. "Because."

Gemma waits, inhaling a breath but not letting it out again.

"He won't make you happy." His voice cracks midsentence. "He's only doing it to annoy me."

She laughs again, this time just on the right side of rude but still callous and shocking and Harry lifts his head to look at her face as the noise travels out of her mouth. "Do you really think that?" Her voice drops barely above a whisper, "Do you really think that lowly of me?"

Harry swallows. It- He doesn't think that way about her at all. No. It's Louis − he doesn't love her the way Harry does, the way Harry _could_ if she'd let him. But saying that seem childish and selfish, and instead Harry shakes his head. He shakes his head because he's already fucked it up − if he says anything more, Gemma will go. And, for now, he has her next to him. She hasn't moved.

He breathes out a soft 'no' against her cheek and leaves it at that.

They share a breath between them.

"What if I love him?"

Harry doesn't let go of her, but Gemma doesn't let go of him either.

He counters, "What if I love you?"

The laughter from Gemma's lips is harsh, rude to a point but so honest Harry can't be mad at her for it. Gemma sighs and tells him, "You don't." She says, "You're just a kid, a greedy little toddler with everyone's affections. Same as Nick." Her voice softens, "Same as my brother. And that's ok, really. That's ok. But you don't love me, not-"

Harry cuts her off with, "I could." He means it. He really does.

He has heard her and Nick arguing; Nick has told him about Gemma's constant need to leave, to go somewhere quiet. Harry would go. He would. He could take her somewhere and settle − it would be enough, it _would_. Enough for him to turn his back on all of this. . . Why can't she understand that? "Please," and now he's begging. With Gemma's fingers interlocked with his, with everything inside him trying to make her understand he has started begging. "Don't marry him. Please."

"Alright."

It isn't a promise, but it's something. Harry accepts it.

 

 

 

_0 0 4 ._  
_G R E G_

They go on the North American tour without her and come home to the announcement of Gemma's engagement.

Louis saw it coming but Harry didn't. Louis can't decide if that's better or worse; he's expecting it when Harry storms into his office on Saturday morning, three days home and every number Harry has tried for her ringing out, remaining unanswered. He demands, "Who is he?"

Louis snorts.

Harry returns it with, "How long?"

Gemma and Greg have been all over the papers for months by now. But Louis knows it's pointless to state that, so instead he sighs and says, "A while." Harry looks at him. Just looks at him and all Louis can give him is, "I figured you had already heard about them."

"Who is he?" Harry tries again.

Louis licks at the top of his mouth with his tongue, clicks it off his back teeth as he lets the question settle. To be honest, he doesn't really know either − he remembers the fight Gemma and Harry had the day Greg came to interview him, the whole thing getting called off and somewhere between then and now Greg has managed to spend enough time with Gemma to propose to her but. He doesn't really know much about Greg. (It's unimportant, really.) He shrugs at Harry.

Although he laughs, there's a serious tone to Harry's voice as he says, "Do you think we can have them followed?"

Louis widens his eyes at him. Fucking Christ, Styles, he thinks to himself. "No, no, no. We can't," he pushes out of his mouth, shaking his head so fast his neck aches from it when he stops. "Just. Leave it. Gemma's made her choice."

With a huff, Harry flops down in the chair. His limbs, ridiculous and everywhere, spread out of the boundaries of his seat, arms tossed over the sides and legs stretched so far they reach under Louis' desk. The toe of Harry's boot scrapes the front of Louis' shin, pressing into the bone. Louis gets back to his work, leaving Harry sit there sulking, still a bit too jetlagged to deal with him right now. They don't talk while Louis reads over pages, flipping between various ones while Harry sighs in an obvious, attention seeking way.

He makes him wait.

He feels Harry's eyes on him the whole time.

After an hour, they go for lunch − Harry offers to pay and Louis goes with it. It's all the label's money anyway but Harry doesn't think of it like that. As they walk along, their footsteps are out of time with one another; the click-clack of Harry's battered brown boots _just_ a split second slower than Louis' softer step. Louis listens to it as they walk down the street towards the sandwich place Harry has always favoured. He casts a glance over at Harry to find him chewing his lip, his head down and his shoulders slumped, whole body angled forward. He hasn't said anything since they left. Louis knows he's waiting for him to say something − to say the _right_ thing − but-

He doesn't. They don't talk about anything. Not about Gemma's engagement. Or how good it is to be back home again, the house quiet after the tour and everyone taking a break from it all. Or how Louis proposed to Gemma and Harry told her not to marry him. Yes. Louis knows about that. But he doesn't bring it up.

Once they've ordered, taking a table in the corner, away from the window, Harry fiddling with his signet ring, Louis finally takes pity on him and says, "It'll be nice. A wedding to look forward to. I've always liked weddings."

Harry scoffs a laugh through his nose, his face saying everything.

"Don't think I'm going to be invited."

All Louis does is hum. Harry doesn't speak again. When their food arrives, Louis thanks the waitress with a broad grin. She smiles back at him nervously, eyeing Harry but stepping away before she can say anything to him. As he picks out the lettuce from his sandwich − "Why did you order it if you don't like it?" "I _do_ like it, but they always give me too much. I like to pick the leaves I want to eat." − Harry asks, "Do you think she loves him?"

Louis shrugs.

"Must do," he answers. "Or else she wouldn't have said yes, would she?" 

It sounds like the truth.

Harry makes a wounded noise, dropping a lettuce leaf onto his plate. He's not very hungry all of a sudden and he wraps an arm around himself, a makeshift shield. Louis goes to reach for him, already leaning across the table to him, but he catches himself before his wrist is passed the condiments.

The look Harry gives him hit solidly at his chest, makes it difficult to breathe for a moment. And when Louis rights himself again, swallowing down the bite of his sandwich he hasn't chewed well enough at all, it's still there on Harry's voice. He looks 17 again, the boy Louis met in the bar but without any of that cocky assuredness. He looks 17 and lost. Louis knows he shouldn't but he feels- he feels disgustingly proud of himself for being the one Harry looks at like that − he wants to tear the look from Harry's face and keep it in his pocket forever, never letting anyone else see it because it's his. Because Harry looked at him like that and no one else, only the two of them sitting in the corner of a small sandwich place, not really discussing Gemma's engagement.

The utter need on Harry's face, all for him.

"Harry," he begins, faltering on the vowel so he has to let it go.

With his index finger Louis pushes Harry's plate towards him. "That," he states, nodding at it, "goes in your mouth." Harry's lips quirk as though attempting a smile. "C'mon, finish fussing over your lettuce and eat."

(Louis doesn't think about how Harry only needs him, needs him to be solid and here for him, to love him and look after him because the girl he wants to love him is marrying someone else. Someone so completely _not_ Harry Styles. No. Louis doesn't think about that at all.)

Harry does as he's told, which does nothing to quell the warm swell of pride inside Louis' chest.

But that night, it's Nick Harry goes to, not Louis. It's Nick Harry finds, his bottom lip bitten red raw from chewing it and voice breaking as he asks if he can come in, soft, like he's trying to stop himself crying. Nick's meaner about it than Louis was before but Harry goes pliant, nodding his head in agreement and letting himself get moved into the room as Nick tells him, "S'not worth getting upset over."

(He says it like he always knew Gemma was going to leave and, maybe, maybe Nick has just been counting off the days.)

"Who is he?" Harry asks.

At first, Nick doesn't answer. But, after a minute, the two of them lying on the bed side by side, he says, "Just some guy," and into his arm, Harry mutters back 'some guy who makes her happy'. Even muffled into the flesh, Nick catches the bitterness in his tone. He has to laugh at it. Their shoulders knock because of it and Harry startles, nearly braining himself on Nick's jawbone but settles, leaning into it. He leans into Nick and Nick asks, "Do you still love me?"

Harry never answers.

"She never loved you."

"Doesn't mean I love her any less."

Nick sighs and Harry bites him. Bites the flesh of his shoulder, sinks his teeth into the freckled skin and Nick sighs again. "You can't make everyone love you," he explains.

"She loved you. Still does, I'm sure."

He sounds like a child. Nick strokes his fingers through Harry's hair. The angle makes his shoulder ache, his wrist clicking a bit from too much piano playing but Harry seems to go quiet at the touch. "It's different. We're twins."

"Aren't," Harry reminds him.

Nick huffs.

"Do you love me?" he asks. Nick considers not answering since Harry never answered him but- But instead he tells him:

"The same as always I guess."

 

;;

 

When Harry told Louis he didn't think Gemma would invite him to the wedding, Louis had presumed he was just sulking. But an invite for him never arrives. No invites for any of them arrive and it's not until Gemma and Greg are caught in Venice, sitting in a coffee shop wearing matching gold bands that anyone knows they're married. It sort of stings like betrayal when Louis sees the photos; Greg's ring on her finger and a smile on her face, her hair pulled into an up-do so her tattoo is on display.

She comes to visit once her honeymoon is over, but only to see Nick.

He tries to be mad but it lasts about two seconds, a smile splitting his face almost comically in two and he grabs his baby sister, wrapping her up in a hug and whispering, "Congratulations," into the crook of her neck. "I'm so happy for you."

It probably sounds like a lie, lost in the waves of her dark hair, but Nick means it. He means it with everything he has. He pulls back, meeting her eyes − they have the same yellow flecks in them, something they definitely inherited from a parent − and tells her, "Really. I'm happy if you're happy."

Gemma just yanks him back in. "Don't," she says, voice wobbling, betraying her. "Don't just be happy for me."

Nick presses his fingers into the gaps between the bumps of her spine, palm spread over her flank. He wets his mouth with his tongue but it gets tangled in her hair − he has nothing to say back but he needs to fill the silence. He's the older sibling here, he should be the one making sense, explaining how it is meant to be. Not the other way round. The woman in his arms is still the same girl from his kitchen, with her bruised knees and in her school uniform after getting on a train to come and find him. Nothing will ever change that, no matter what other lies they tell the world, that is how it is. Nick needs to be her big brother but he can't find the words.

"Be happy for you too," she says.

Nick laughs.

Gemma says his name. _Nick_. The way she always has. She says it again, like it's the most important thing she has ever said, and Nick raises his head this time, giving her his full attention. "I'm sorry," she apologises, "sorry." Then, again, "I'm so sorry."

Absently, Nick reaches for her collar. Goes to touch her neck, to pull her back in and tell her 'shut up', 'you're fine', 'don't be stupid' and anything else dismissive and relevant, but he spots a wrinkle in the collar of her shirt and. 

Yeah. 

He has to fix the wrinkle for her. He watches the bob of her throat as she says something else, the words unimportant because he's going to tell her to shut up once he's done fixing her collar, he is. She gulps in air the same his thumb scuffs her skin. She says something else but Nick still isn't looking at her, and she talks about regret and everything they've done and how sorry, always so _fucking_ sorry she is for everything; she focuses on that, apologies tumbling out of her mouth on and on while all Nick focuses on is her collar, the one point of contact between them in this moment and how he _still_ hasn't got the wrinkle out.

"Nick," she says, finally. "Nick. Can you look at me? Please?"

Nick pushes away the chuckle threatening to bubble out and closes his eyes. Just because.

The wrinkle pushes back against his thumb, stubborn to the last.

"I don't think I can," he admits, unsure of what he's really talking about. Gemma leans in, forcing his hand with her and his fingers clamp around her throat violently with the movement. But Nick doesn't let go. Gemma swallows again, chin bumping his palm. "I don't think I can do what you're asking me to." She looks at him as if everything he has said makes perfect sense. Nick whimpers. His fingers loosen before going back in again. He really has no clue what he's saying no to.

Gemma breathes out, "That's ok." He feels the vibrations of it against his palm, coming from her and through him.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 8 4 )_

"And that was it."

It sounds like a 'the end' but Zayn has to check, "Ever see her again?"

Louis shakes his head. "After she married Greg, she. Already started making her way underground, disappearing. I should have known then but I still thought I had time." Zayn looks up, meeting his eye and silently asking 'known what?'. Louis tips his mouth into a smile but it doesn't meet his eyes. "Should have known it was the beginning of the end. I thought if I had Harry, if he had Nick that maybe we could make something work."

Zayn feels himself leaning in. Like getting in closer will help him take in the story better. (Better than the tape recorder was already doing for him.) He waits, a feeling rising in his chest as if Louis is going to tell him the secrets of life.

"But with Gemma gone, we just. Didn't seem to fit together any more." He breathes out a sigh. "For a while we tried but-"

Nodding like he understands, Zayn says, "Yeah."

(Maybe he does. After spending yesterday with Ben and today with Louis, listening to them explain everything, maybe he does understand. _Fuck._ He hopes not.)

;;

 

Greg hands him the frame. The photo inside is slightly faded from the sun and the wall behind its spot on the mantelpiece is darker than the rest, where it has been protected by the shadow. He doesn't comment on it, since it isn't his place but Zayn thinks he wouldn't still have a photo of his wedding sitting pride of place in the living room. Personally.

Opposite him, Greg takes his seat again.

Zayn says, "You look happy."

"We were," he answers. "At least. I thought we were."

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 7 4 )_

"We should go somewhere," he urges. Gemma puts the last of the plates away. The towel folds around her hands and she gives Greg a look. "Do something." She doesn't budge. "You said you went travelling with Nick, before he got famous and all that − we should do something like that."

She retorts, "Get famous?"

It isn't a funny joke. Then again, she isn't smiling. But Greg still doesn't even give her the satisfaction of an eyeroll.

"Travel. We should go back and see all the places you went with Nick. Show me your life."

His shoes squeaks against the floor as he steps closer to her. Tangling their fingers together, Greg feels the coolness of golden band around her finger against his palm. Gemma squeezes their hands together tighter, her ring digging deeper into him. "I wanna know you," Greg explains, pressing in close and letting his breath travel across her skin. Gemma smiles softly. "I want to see your life."

"You know my life."

"No," he returns, and their noses butt together. "I know what people say about you. And the little things you've told me. But I wanna know you. All of you."

"Alright."

She agrees but Gemma drops Greg's hand.

 

;;

 

It takes them all a while to adjust to her being gone, starting with big things like not saving a place for her to sit down on the tour bus or counting people off as they exit a party together. But it seems the smaller they go, the more personal the moments without Gemma there, the harder it is to. Feel _normal_ , as if Gemma was the key that made them all fit together.

For weeks Louis feels like he's forgetting something, like he's constantly about to trip over something that isn't there. It's frustrating and stupid, a feeling he doesn't want to deal with. But when he turns to Harry to tell him about it, he isn't there.

Nick and Harry react in opposite ways to Gemma leaving them.

Harry starts to cling to Nick harder. Nick keeps trying to pull away. Louis watches the pathetically sad dance the pair do around one another and wonders if he could have prevented this by marrying her sooner. If he had just- been there, properly. If he'd married her, Harry might not be trying to replace her with Nick. And Nick might not be trying to replace her − trying to do as she asked him to and be happy − by fucking everyone else. By drinking more. (Six concerts in a row Nick drops acid before going on stage and comes off it dehydrated and swaying. Harry always puts him to bed but ends up returning to his own; he has to pass Louis' door every night and every time Louis hears his footsteps, he doesn't think he's ever more aware of how alone he truly is.)

And even when Nick finds someone new, the replacement for Harry since Harry reminds him too much of Gemma, it doesn't change anything.

 

;;

 

His name is RJ.

His name is RJ King and he's a pretty blonde model with long legs. He's completely and utterly Harry's type but Nick got there first and even the most well known of groupies have standard. He's pretty in an obvious way. At least, in Harry's eyes − he tells Nick precisely this as he's standing around at soundcheck. With a sneer curling his lip and three lines in his forehead like he's considering between a frown and a pout, Harry tells Nick, "He's cute. In a totally obvious way."

All Nick responds with is a laugh.

He looks over in the direction Harry is, smiling automatically without seeing RJ. He's swarmed by people, lost chatting in the crowd standing around and it takes Nick a moment or two to find him. He's also kind of preoccupied with the piano; the D beside middle C has been bothering him for a while, the chord sounding on the verge of splitting every time he hits it, just making it sound _wrong_. But it's almost as if RJ feels his eyes on him, Nick barely finding him amongst the others before RJ's waving at him.

(Now that he's found him Nick feels stupid. All around him are people with identical outfits and matching haircuts; the type of people who hang out with the band after a gig and get away with it, cos they're just _that_ cool. RJ, all foppishly lovely and taller than most of them, sticks out.)

"I like him," Nick tells Harry.

He ignores the fact Harry's face moves into a frown and gives his full attention to the piano, quickly changing the subject to, "I think there's- can you go get me one of the techs, please?" and letting Harry run off. There's a flush all along Nick's cheeks, reddening all the way to the tips of his ears and down the back of his neck; he's not sure what scares him more, RJ finding out he's just said that to Harry or the fact he said it out loud at all.

In the crowd, RJ twists his sleeve cuff around his thumb. The collar of his shirt pulls with it, exposing skin.

Casting a glance over, Nick spots the glint of the silver chain around RJ's neck in the low lights, the way it sits across the jut of clavicle bone under his skin. Whatever conversation RJ is having with the redhead in front of him − bottle red, like the colour of a fire engine, not natural − he's more interested in it than fixing his clothes.

Nick smiles one last time in RJ's direction and decides to go find out where Harry is with that tech.

 

;;

 

"Is Nick there?"

Harry almost drops the phone. Gemma asks the question like she hasn't realised it's him. He stammers out, "Uh, no. No. He's out tonight. But I can- I can take a message," suddenly 15 years old again and talking to the girl he's had a crush on since the first day of school.

She makes a soft noise, thoughtful but barely there. "Right," and she bites out the 't' sound.

Harry moves to apologise without thinking about it. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were going to call."

"It's fine," she brushes off and Harry imagines her waving her hand through the air, dismissive, even with the click of her wrist. "I don't have a message for him but. Tell him that I called, yeah?"

"Yeah," he affirms. "I can do that."

"Thanks, Harry."

 

;;

 

Louis knows the only reason Harry comes to him is because- because Nick's out. Because Nick has chosen RJ and Harry is still a cruel, selfish boy-child who needs someone − doesn't want, doesn't have to have but physically _needs_ , with every molecule of himself − someone to hold him and tell him he's wanted. Because the fans aren't enough; the platinum records and all the money. None of it is the same as a person sighing his name into the flow of his neck to shoulder.

Tonight, that person is Louis.

And Louis lets him. Louis doesn't comment on the fact that Harry has barely spoken to him in two weeks. He doesn't bring up the fact the other day when Louis asked Harry if he wanted to go for lunch that Harry completely ignored him, angrily strumming the guitar until it was beaten into submission and played something resembling a future turn. He doesn't mention it because for now, Harry needs Louis.

Saying that Louis isn't equally as selfish would be a lie; Louis needs Harry to need him almost as much as Harry needs Louis.

Harry bites down on his collarbone, hard enough Louis is already picturing the purple-red-black mark that will greet him in mirror come the morning. And he says, "It's ok, I'm here."

 

;;

 

Gemma manages to catch him on Thursday.

"Come for dinner tomorrow," she says down the phone, breathy yet loud enough for Cole to hear as he walks passed. Nick can't stop smiling. "Bring RJ too. He sounds wonderful."

The most Gemma knows about RJ is what she has read in the papers. (Because she rarely calls but Nick understands why she doesn't. He rarely calls her too, if that's anything.) And yeah, maybe he isn't the person Nick is going to settle down and marry. Maybe he isn't Nick's 'happily ever after' but he's his 'happy right now' and the fact his sister − his settled, happy sounding sister − wants to meet him (purely because he makes Nick happy, because Nick is doing what she asked him to do) Nick is beaming, like someone's fucking mum at their first ever piano recital.

He replies, "Yeah. Course. He's free."

Nick knows he's free because he's already asked, on the off chance Gemma was going to invite him. On the off chance she was going to do exactly what she has just done.

They both come out with, "I can't wait to see you," Gemma making an odd humming noise after it, like she's on the verge of bursting with excitement. Nick smiles at the idea, hasn't fucking stopped smiling throughout this whole conversation. He asks, "What time would you like us there?"

There's a muffled, scratching noise on the other end of the line, Gemma's voice suddenly half-blocked as she says something to Greg before coming back with, "Around eight. Greg's got a thing so he won't be home before half seven." She can't see Nick nodding in reply. "That ok for you?"

"Perfect."

Absently, Nick wonders what she's wearing. Where she's standing. What colour the wallpaper is and if once she's hung up will Greg pull her in and hold her. (His smile falters a little. Maybe.)

"I'll be- _we'll_ be there," he states. Solid and sure of himself, Nick nods again and says, "I'll bring a bottle of wine."

Gemma laughs.

(Nick feels like crying at the sound but can't explain why.)

 

;;

 

He can't pull Harry back to him. Not with the look on Harry's face. Louis can't see him like this, so he lets him go. Five minutes later Louis hears him retching in the bathroom. With a sigh, Louis decides to ignore all their calls for the day. 

It's for the best.

 

;;

 

Gemma just walks away. Greg throws all the newspapers out and leaves the television off for the rest of the day.

 

;;

 

Whether they died of drug overdose like Jimi Hendrix, choked on a ham sandwich like Mama Cass or were killed in a car accident like Nick; whether or not the family and close friends have asked for privacy, a closed church for a private, personal ceremony, fans will always turn up. In ways, Harry supposes as he shuffles along seven or so rows back from the coffin, wearing sunglasses he hopes no one will recognise him in, it's sweet of them. It's sweet that they cared enough about Nick in his life to think it justified to turn up at something like this.

But none of them knew Nick the way Harry knew him. And none of them have any right to be here because of that.

A few people ahead of him Harry spots Gemma. Next to her is a man he sort of recognises from photos, paparazzi shots of her with him in Italy almost a year ago. _Greg_. Harry knows he shouldn't, the time and the place and all that, but he finds it very difficult to not glare at the other man's back as they step closer and closer to the grave.

To their left flashbulbs from photographers incessantly flash and a few girls in the crowd clearly spot him, calling out Harry's name.

He feels like he's about to get sick.

Everyone around him hears his name, more people in the crowd turning around and looking for him in his black wool peacoat amongst others sporting the same uniform. But up ahead, Gemma doesn't turn back to look for him.

It's easier to ignore everything, once everyone is lined up around the grave and watching as it's lowered into the open hole by four morticians. Because now all Harry can think about is Nick inside that wooden box. Nick inside that box in fuck knows how many pieces − at least two, after the windshield of the car severed his head off. (Thankfully, the paper's left that gory detail out. But Harry heard it from the coroner's report. He called up and asked specifically. He's not too sure why, since he spent the rest of the day lying in a heap on the ground crying, thinking about Nick's mangled body covered in blood.)

Whilst the priest leads everyone in a decade of the rosary, someone hands Harry a white rose. "For after," they explain, "to throw into the grave."

Harry wonders if there's somewhere he can go to throw up.

He plucks a petal off the stem and says thank you although the person has moved four people on through the crowd. He watches it flutter to the ground, landing on the toe of his overly scuffed boots. He's not sure what he did to deserve a rose, since every other funeral he has ever attended only family and close, close friends were given roses to throw in. But he doesn't question it. (Mainly because he has no one to ask.)

When he looks up again, kicking the petal away and crushing it underfoot, he catches Gemma's eyes on him.

They barely remain a full second once he looks at her but something warm, oddly comforting coils in his belly at the realisation she was looking at him. Despite his current surroundings and situation, Harry lets his mouth crack into a smile.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 8 4 )_

"And that was the last time you saw Harry," Zayn asks. He stops his pen, the tape recorder picking up only silence as Greg shakes his head.

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 7 5 )_

Neither of them are aware he's there. Greg sits down as quietly as he can, watching as Harry tries to pull Gemma back to him. But she stands steadfast, refusing to budge. Neither does Harry. The moment is scarily like the first moment he saw them together, one he banked away in his head, wondering if he could use it for his piece − the rockstar fighting with his muse. It was poetic then.

Now, it's just sad.

"He was my brother," she replies, her chin angled defiantly. Harry doesn't falter, looking back just as angry, just as upset. "He was my brother." This time, it's softer, less of a fight in her.

Gemma hasn't spoken at all about Nick's death. And Greg doesn't want to push her.

She says, "He was mine."

There are multiple arguments Harry could fight back with. Greg thinks of them all, sitting on the second step from the top and watching them; Nick was a grown man, his own person who made his own choices, Harry was never his keeper. Greg thinks of them all and waits for Harry to say one. But what comes out of his mouth as a reply is, "But you left him." A thousand times worse than anything Greg could have come up with. "You left and Nick stayed. He was always going to follow you."

Gemma looks away, can't keep looking at Harry when his eyes are like that. When he's looking at her like _that_. 

"You left all of us," he says.

If he was a better person − and Greg would like to think he is a great person − he would go down there and throw the other man out, Harry Styles or not. He would go down and stand up for his wife. Tell this man, with his ridiculous hair and shirt, who is gripping Gemma's arm so tightly, not letting her get away from him, that he can't speak to her like that. Can't touch her like that any more. But-

This is between them. 

Greg has no place in this fight.

He feels sick. Like a fraud and a coward, a charade of a man who loves this woman. Mostly, he wants to punch Harry for being Harry. For being Harry fucking Styles and coming into his home and looking at his wife like that. Not because of Gemma. That probably makes Greg the worst in the world. He stays where he is and listens for what happens next.

"I had to," she insists. But. She seems to take a step closer to him. "I had to leave."

Harry's voice is softer as he asks, "Why? Because he asked you to marry him? Because he was so much better than all of us?" When Gemma laughs, Harry seems to falter. He stumbles into her, his hand wrapped around her arm but looser now. And she steadies him. It's barely above a whisper but Greg manages to catch the way Harry asks, "Why did you leave?"

"Because I couldn't stay any more."

"You left him."

Again, Gemma laughs. This time there is more bite to it, a harsh snarling thing but Harry doesn't back away. "I never did. He always had me. He knew that." A pause. Someone swallows − it may have been Greg himself. He leans forwards, towards the banisters. Thankfully, the stairs don't creak. "But I couldn't keep doing it any more; I couldn't keep stealing his happiness. . . So, I found my own."

Harry does his best not to fall as she slips away from him. Out, under his arm and passed his side. He makes no move to reach for her again. She stops in the doorway, turning as if to say one final thing to Harry but she looks passed him. Straight up at Greg on the stairs, as if she had known he was there all along.

Greg closes his eyes. He hears the sound of the latch. When he opens them again, Gemma is gone.

 

 

 

 

( 1 9 8 4 )

"It's funny," he says, but there's no hint of laughter about his tone, "how beautiful people look when they're walking out the door." Greg says, "And she looked beautiful right then."

Zayn asks, "Did she ever come back?"

Greg shakes his head. A smile comes to his face but doesn't reach his eyes. "No. I never saw Gemma again. Or Harry, once he'd gone; I sat on those stairs for what felt like forever, waiting for him to go. But he stood there. Waiting for her to come back. I don't think he even know I was there. By the time he left, she was long gone − I couldn't find her anywhere." He pauses to sigh. "Two weeks later, I got divorce papers in the post."

"And that was it?"

He nods. He nods until he laughs, bitter and hollow, and says, "Yeah. That was it. I had served my purpose, I'd made her happy. But now Nick was dead. And Harry was back. So, Gemma had to go."

Zayn nods, makes a noise like he's agreeing. He gives Greg a moment, then asks, "Did you ever see her again? After the divorce, even just on the street or bumped into her by accident, did you ever-" It feels redundant repeating the question, so Zayn lets it go. Greg's already nodding anyway.

"Once. And I don't think she saw me," he explains.

Across his notepad, Zayn's pen makes little scratching noises as he jots down his shorthand.

Greg thinks for a moment. His fingers tap out a pattern on the side of his cup. _One two three one two three_ until he continues, "I was going to go over and say hello but. She was with someone else − I didn't see who but there was someone. A guy. She seemed happy. So. I didn't really think it was my place to go over and try and make small talk."

Just for reference, Zayn asks, "How long ago was this?"

"About five years ago. In London, not far from here actually." Greg pauses, starting up the rhythm with his fingers again. "I'm not even sure if she's still in the country."

Zayn doesn't stay much longer than that. He doesn't want to seem rude, but there doesn't seem to be anything more Greg can tell him.

 

 

 

 

_0 0 5 ._  
_Z A Y N_

"They've told us to stop the story." Over the connection, Liam's voice crackles with static. The static tells him, "I'm sorry, mate."

Zayn kicks at the ground, scuffing the front of his shoe as he sighs. All that work, for nothing. Everyone he spoke to, all the rolls of tape he went through recording, the indent on his finger from the press of the pen. The looks across people's face he catalogued away in his head to add colour to the story. Now he can't write the fucking thing?

Liam never explains who 'they' are.

He repeats, "I'm sorry. But they called the office. Perrie was onto them for ages."

Finally, Zayn comes into the conversation with, "Why can't we write it?"

A shuffle noise, like Liam shrugs, and he answers, "Privacy. Mainly. They said the people we wanted to write about aren't for public consumption anymore." It sounds like a direct quote, one Perrie probably filtered to Liam with a roll of her eyes and a sigh afterwards. "No idea how they found out, but that's how it is."

"Yeah," Zayn obliges. There's nothing he can really do about it now, is there. "I'll come in tomorrow and see what the boss says." Liam lets him go easily, wishes him a good night and hangs up.

On his way home, he heads towards the grocery store round the corner from his place. He needs milk and is oddly in the mood for a banana, shaking his head to himself as the thought hits him. The automatic doors swish open, stopping with a metallic click, and Zayn heads straight for fruit and veg.

It's not a big deal, he assures himself, banana in hand and halfway to dairy. So, he's wasted three days chasing up a story he's never going to get to write. It's not like he actually got the information his editor asked for − sure, Zayn found out some things ( _a lot of things_ really) that escaped public knowledge, but he never found out- the ending. Nick died, Gemma married and divorced Greg, Harry disappeared. That's it. Ten years after the crash (a decade after Zayn came downstairs and found Doniya in tears at breakfast, the photos of metal strewn across the road, the car and the fence mangled together) and he still hasn't found out what happened next.

With a sigh, he pulls open the dairy fridge. Condensation wets his fingertips as a small boy runs passed him, knocking into his elbow. He looks about three and Zayn lets his eyes follow him, waiting for a parent or older sibling to appear and catch him.

"Sorry," he hears behind him, a woman's voice with the hint of a smile to it. "I let him go for one second."

A bottle of milk between his fingers, Zayn turns to tell her not to worry about. His mouth is ready to go with 'no harm done' but then he sees her.

He almost drops the milk, sort of stumbling backwards.

The boy runs over to her.

Fuck.

She-

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 7 7 )_

Three years later seems like a random amount to hold a memorial concert for someone but when Zayn is offered free tickets to it by Danny, he keeps his mouth shut and accepts them. He wears the plainest black t-shirt he owns out of respect and holds Leigh-Anne's hand when the Paper Ships take the stage without Nick. But when Harry comes out to join them and people around him start openly sobbing, Zayn bails out.

He finds himself round the back of the theatre, men hanging around trucks of equipment, half heartedly guarding the door. One of them lets Zayn pass with a brief, "Alright mate. Getting a bit much in there?" and Zayn gives him a nod, finding it within him to smile despite the occasion.

Slipping around a corner, he leans back against a wall. He closes his eyes for a second, tilting his head back.

When he opens them again, he spots the person opposite him. Dark hair, brown eyes and the same pattern of freckles as Nick's across her nose.

Outside in the queue people had been wondering if Gemma was going to turn up. 

Pragmatically, Danny had said, "She probably is going to turn up but I don't think she's going to come on stage. We won't even know she is here." Everyone had more or less agreed. Now, Zayn just stands gawking at her. Quietly, she gives him a smile.

He immediately feels the need to apologise, saying, "Sorry. I just needed some air. I didn't know-"

She laughs. "It's fine," she dismisses. "It's a free courtyard. I came out for the same reason as you."

Silence falls between them, one of the men from the trucks coming around to check if she's ok but Gemma waves him off with her hand through the air, mouths 'fine, fine' until he leaves again. Zayn rubs the toes of his shoes together, standing pigeon toed opposite her. He lifts his arm to scratch the back of his neck, giving himself an excuse to tilt his head down, to look away from her.

Of all the photos of her he has ever seen, nothing had prepared him for how lovely she truly is. 

(If anything, Gemma Arterton is softer in real life than she photographs. Cheekbones less severe and her mouth a light flush colour, bare of lipstick.)

"You need a light for that?" she asks, pointing at the cigarette behind his ear.

He really doesn't, the bulge of his own purple lighter pressing into his hip, but now that she has offered it would feel rude to decline. Zayn leans in after he nods, the cigarette now on his tongue as her thumb flicks the spark and an orange-yellow flame burns the end of it. He finds the first drag is always the best, savouring it in his chest for a few extra seconds before exhaling. Out of courtesy, he offers it to her, the filter pinched between his fingers but Gemma refuses with the shake of her head.

There is no reason for him to do it. But there's the fact that there's the two of them, standing here facing one another, neither of them any intention of going back inside any time soon (and maybe also the fact that Zayn is standing looking at Gemma fucking Arterton and his brain isn't thinking straight) and Zayn asks:

"Do you want to. Maybe. Go somewhere? Get away from here for a bit?"

She watches him for a few seconds, as if taking him in, trying to read his words for any hidden meaning. Zayn smokes the rest of his cigarette, stamping out the cherry against the wall. "Alright," she answers, pushing off the brickwork behind her. "I'd love a cup of tea, actually."

Zayn grins.

"I know a good place."

Fishing a pound out of his pocket, Zayn pays, carrying the two mugs as he lets Gemma pick where they sit.

A few people watch her walk passed, obviously trying to place her face − one woman is whispering something about 'familiar' as Zayn passes the table, but no one stops them.

She doesn't take milk or sugar, while Zayn smiles and tells her, "More for me then," as he dumps most of the jug of milk into his cup. For whatever reason, it makes her laugh again and as the sound rings out, Zayn gets caught thinking how weird this is. How weird it is _he_ is sitting in a corner café drinking tea with Gemma Arterton. And how normal she is, her fingers clasped around her cup as she breathes in the smell of it before the first mouthful.

"So," she says, after a suitable amount of time has passed, "you came alone?"

Zayn shakes his head.

"No," he says. "My friends are actually back there. I just. Needed to get out." She nods in agreement, understanding and slow. "What about you? You're not alone, are you?"

Gemma scoffs. "No, no. I came with some people but. Got a little overwhelming, didn't it. Had to get out." Her face softens into a smile and Zayn knows his own mouth is copying her, the brim of his cup bumping into his bottom lip as he does. "Glad I did though."

"Oh?"

She nods. "Yeah. Or else I would never had had this amazing cup of tea."

He laughs, not catching the noise quick enough to hide the pride in it. He says, "Told you I knew a good place."

Another cup of tea and they should probably start thinking about heading back. Zayn is just about thinking how to say it when he looks up and sees Gemma pulling on her coat. "C'mon," she states, "I better get you back to your friends." On the way out, more people watch them, one person leaning across the table to their friend to hiss 'it's definitely her but I don't know who he is' − Zayn lets that sentence play in his head as they walk along, elbows bumping sometimes. At the front of the theatre, the crowds are starting to fill the street, bustling together as one mass. Amongst them, Zayn spots Danny moving to wave but catches himself before his arm gets too high.

"My friends are in that," he says.

Smiling, Gemma nods. "Yeah." She motions towards the back courtyard, back to the walls where they first met. "I'm going to go that way. Let you get back to them. Thanks for the tea."

He tells her, "They're never going to believe me about that, you know?"

She considers it for a moment, every second passing another one where Danny could spot him and come over. Other than Zayn, no one knows Gemma is here and greedily, Zayn would like to keep it that way. "We can't have that now, can we?" she says, turning her head and slipping her hand to her ear, through her hair.

The earring slips out into her hand with relative ease.

Under the sun, it glints, practically winking at Zayn as he gulps. Those are real diamonds.

Gemma sticks out her hand, "Here," dropping it into his palm when Zayn offers it up. "If they don't believe you, show them that. That way, you can prove you met me. Or, prove that in the time since you were gone you managed to come across quite a lot of money and bought only one earring with it."

Zayn laughs.

"Right."

"Yeah," he agrees. "Thanks."

He's not expecting it when she leans in and kisses his cheek but he thinks he manages to hide his shocked gasp quite well. "Anytime. Thanks again for the tea."

(It's only afterwards, on the bus back home, Zayn realises he never told her his name.)

 

 

 

 

_( 1 9 8 4 )_

"You," Gemma says. Zayn nods, like he's agreeing with her. "The boy who bought me tea, at the-"

"Yeah," he cuts across before she can finish. "You too. You look-" He lets the sentence trail away, not sure where to go with it. The word 'happy' plays across the front of his mind, along with 'I've been looking for you' but he doesn't go with either. "How are you?" he asks, instead.

Her smile is the same as seven years ago, back when he paid for tea and took all the milk because she didn't want it. Fuck. Seven years.

"Can't complain," she answers. "And you? Still casually bumping into people backstage at concerts and taking them for tea?"

Zayn laughs. The bottle in between his fingers slips, forcing him to make an awkward grab for it. Somehow, he manages not to drop it. "Something like that," he answers.

It gets a bit awkward, both of them standing there, nodding. Neither one knowing what to say next. Gemma doesn't know his name and Zayn has spent the best part of his working week trying to find her, going through everyone who knew her only to finally stumble across her in the dairy aisle of _Tesco's_ after being told he isn't allowed finish his article. Typical. In front of her, the boy starts humming something into her leg and it's the first time Zayn looks down at him properly.

Gemma says, "I should get going."

The boy pulls his face away from her, beaming. He says something but Zayn misses it, not really listening. Too taken with-

Shit.

The boy looks exactly like Harry Styles. 

Everything suddenly comes crashing into place inside Zayn's head, the weight of it jolting him, making him feel like he's been by a ten tonne truck. He just about manages to keep hold of the milk. There's a momentary flicker of worry across Gemma's face, but when Zayn smiles at her, right himself again, she says, "Gotta get this one home."

The boy grins up at Zayn.

Zayn blinks too many times, just about returning the smile.

"Yeah," he says, nodding too quickly. "Yeah, you should. And I've got-" but he trails off, nowhere to go other than 'my milk and banana'.

She is about to step away, fingers tightening on the handle of her basket as the boy takes her free hand (the one with the gold band around her ring finger, a sapphire ring next to it) but Zayn reaches out and stops her. She turns to him, a confused wrinkle between her brows and Zayn stammers out, "Sorry, just. It was really good to see you and you. I. Congratulations. You seem really happy." And, as an afterthought, "Your son is adorable."

"Thank you," she replies, the smile on her face genuine and wide. "You look good yourself."

Zayn nods and lets her go; keeps nodding until she's around the corner and gone.

He needs to lie down. He goes to take a step but ends up laughing instead. Standing, in the middle of the dairy aisle, Zayn starts laughing as Gemma heads off to pay and go home with a child who is so obviously Harry's son Zayn can't believe he didn't notice it straight off. He laughs, thinking of everything Louis said, of Greg's voice as he told him about finding Harry and Gemma arguing before she left him, all the tiny anecdotes of how loud and destructive they were together − of all the little pieces and stories of how they never loved one another, not properly. And yet. Here they were, ten years after her brother's death, a wedding band on her finger and a little boy in her arms.

Zayn can't believe he didn't work it out sooner.

_Where else_ would they have ended up?

Suddenly, he doesn't want that banana anymore.

 

;;

 

He dials the number as soon as he's home, the cable stretching just enough for Zayn to root through his fridge while he waits for someone to answer. Perrie picks up just as he's tossing a packet of carrots back down into the vegetable drawer, deciding against them, and she greets him with a breathy, "Hiya."

"I found her," he says, moving his attention to the two day old takeout.

Perrie is in the middle of asking 'who' as Zayn corrects himself, goes, "No. I found them. I found _them_. They're together; they've _been_ together this whole time."

"Who?" She finally manages to get the whole word out.

Zayn shakes his head, laughing softly because of course. Of course everyone else is still two steps behind, even though it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Harry Styles. Gemma Arterton. They got out − they walked away from it all after Nick's death. They're married, they have a little boy; he looks just like both of them." He laughs again, and Perrie makes a noise in response, half getting out 'are you ok?' before Zayn announces, "It was so obvious. I should have seen it all along." His voice echoes around the empty space in his fridge.

"Have you written it?"

"What?"

"That they ended up together − that that is where they are now."

Zayn sighs. It still sounds like he's laughing. Maybe he is. "I can't," he explains, "the story got pulled. Someone called the office, told us we couldn't publish it." She knows this. She was the one to take the call. But she still scoffs, telling Zayn:

"Fuck them. Write it with different names."

He worries his lip underneath his teeth, enamel scraping flesh until the taste in his mouth starts to turn metallic. "I don't know," he sounds out, considering each syllable. "These are real people, Pez. Not some story."

"So," she replies. " _Make_ it a story. Change the names. We'll find a way to publish it."

The room has turned colder now with the air leaking from the fridge. Zayn shudders against it, fingers wrapped around the edge of the door but not moving to close it. Like he's become stuck in this moment, considering Perrie's idea. He makes a noise. It _is_ a good idea, a great story too but- Zayn can't help feel like he's cheating. Even just thinking about writing it. He shakes his head, more solid now, and closes the fridge.

"I can't," he states.

She tries, "But all your work." But Zayn's already shaking his head, his ear brushing off the phone, hot against his skin.

"I didn't do any work to find out the ending. I was just buying milk."

Perrie hums. "I suppose."

Zayn agrees. "It's for the best."

**_F I N ._ **

**Author's Note:**

> guess who has two thumbs, is pointing at themselves and is posting this at 1am without editing it? THIS LADY. please, feel free to point out all and every mistake. thanks.


End file.
